Large animals
U.K. reprint
“[A] bold new literary voice, borderless and brave.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
"Jess Arndt’s Large Animals is wildly original, even as it joins in with the classics of loaded, outlaw literature. Acerbic, ecstatic, hilarious, psychedelic, and affecting in turn, this is an electric debut.” —Maggie Nelson, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of The Argonauts
A Buzzfeed Best Fiction Book of 2017
"Arndt’s short stories are delicious flights of fancy, or obsession, or fertile curiosity—or, more accurately, some beguiling combination of all three. . . . This is a playful and provocative collection, full of sly, deft turns of phrase and striking imagery.” —Publishers Weekly
An Entropy magazine Best Book of 2017
ABOUT LARGE ANIMALS
Jess Arndt’s striking debut collection confronts what it means to have a body. Boldly straddling the line between the imagined and the real, the masculine and the feminine, the knowable and the impossible, these twelve stories are an exhilarating expression of voice and deliver a profoundly original punch to the gut. In “Jeff,” Lily Tomlin confuses Jess for Jeff, instigating a dark and hilarious identity crisis. In “Together,” a couple battles a mysterious and unnamed STD that slowly undoes their relationship, while outside a ferocious weed colonizes their urban garden. And in “Contrails,” a character on the precipice of a seismic change goes on a tour of past lovers, confronting their own reluctance to move on.
Arndt’s subjects are canny noticers even while they remain dangerously blind to their own truest impulses. Often unnamed, these narrators challenge the limits of language—collectively, their voices create a transgressive new formal space that makes room for the undefined, the nonconforming, the queer. And yet, while they crave connection, love, and understanding, they are constantly at risk of destroying themselves. Large Animals pitches toward the heart, pushing at all our most tender parts—our sex organs, our geography, our words, and the tendons and nerves of our culture.
MORE PRAISE FOR LARGE ANIMALS
“Everything in Jess Arndt's Large Animals veers towards the supernatural. Everything is strangely bodily and shape-shifting. Hugely original, this debut is wild.” — Isabel Waidner, author of We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff
"Jess Arndt is like a queer Kafka'’ — Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree
“Each time I pick up a book, this is the voice I’m hoping to hear. Honest, agitating, queer, visionary. Arndt refuses binaries, haunting the space between. The pleasure of Large Animals is in the bite.” – Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
“Metamorphosis – of time, of space, of character – is exposed in every playful sentence of Large Animals. Language will not be kept in its form… a strange and beautiful must-read.” – Dorthe Nors, author of Karate Chop
“Jess Arndt has crafted a queer uncanny, an eerily recognizable landscape of dark magic and darker humor where the instability of bodies, desire, relationships, and the self take on a supernatural dimension. A tremendously exciting collection.” – Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave