Helpful Score: 1
Reading this book is like peeking into a disturbed persons brain, you are both fascinated and repelled. The writing is good. The author really knows her stuff but some of the stories left me with a feeling of horror.
"Everyone who works with animals has a mark somewhere," observes an elephant keeper in the title story of Hannah Tinti's debut short story collection, ANIMAL CRACKERS. For some these marks are physical --- Sandy, who is in charge of the monkey house, has a scar across her face where a gorilla bit her; another elephant keeper has lost an arm. But for others, the marks are deeply psychological: Mike, a failed poet, trains sea lions and tries to pawn his chapbooks to zoogoers, and Ann sells tickets while obsessively guarding her bald cat.
In "Reasonable Terms," three giraffes go on strike for better habitat conditions. Lying prone on the ground, their eyes rolled back and their tongues lolling out, they play dead and refuse to entertain their audiences.
Then there the rabbit, given as a gift to a little boy who mistreat it horribly, besides getting caught in a lawnmower and losing a limb is thrown out a window (several times) because the kid who owned it thought it could fly.
If you want to be really impressed by Hannah Tinti, read her novel "A Good Thief"!
"Everyone who works with animals has a mark somewhere," observes an elephant keeper in the title story of Hannah Tinti's debut short story collection, ANIMAL CRACKERS. For some these marks are physical --- Sandy, who is in charge of the monkey house, has a scar across her face where a gorilla bit her; another elephant keeper has lost an arm. But for others, the marks are deeply psychological: Mike, a failed poet, trains sea lions and tries to pawn his chapbooks to zoogoers, and Ann sells tickets while obsessively guarding her bald cat.
In "Reasonable Terms," three giraffes go on strike for better habitat conditions. Lying prone on the ground, their eyes rolled back and their tongues lolling out, they play dead and refuse to entertain their audiences.
Then there the rabbit, given as a gift to a little boy who mistreat it horribly, besides getting caught in a lawnmower and losing a limb is thrown out a window (several times) because the kid who owned it thought it could fly.
If you want to be really impressed by Hannah Tinti, read her novel "A Good Thief"!
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