An intense, lyrical dynamite.

This is a translated version, hence I don't know how much of the prose and meaning is retained, but whatever, it is haunting from the get go, a sick kind of magic.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

The imagery in Animalia is fantastically vivid. The story is incredibly brutal and there were moments that I found difficult to read. If you're a fan of Irvine Welsh or Alexander Trocchi then I would recommend this to you. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Not a book for the faint-hearted, Animalia is a brutal account of the life of two generations of a French farming family. The first half looks at the time from 1898 through to 1917, in unflinching and gruelling detail. In the second half, we're in 1981, when the daughter of the first half has become the matriarch ruling with an iron fist.

While reading, I found myself thinking that no one's life could have been so relentlessly bleak, so suffused with violence... and then the author came to the war years. Uff. I had to take several breaks, but did keep coming back, because the writing is so compelling and draws you along. In spite of the disgust I felt at many parts of this book, I was completely wrapped up in the world the author created. The prose is beautiful, and the translation is magnificent.

Life in the raw. A family saga – of sorts – tracing the fortunes of French farmers from desperately poor subsistence farming with just a few animals in 1898 to modern pig farming in the 1980s. But this is no bucolic pastoral. It’s one of the most brutal, visceral books I’ve ever read, full of the sights, sounds and smells – oh the smells! – the cruelty and brutality, the savagery almost, of farming and animal husbandry. Eleonore is the matriarch – or genetrix as she is described in the first part of the book – and she is the constant in the narrative as it crosses the years. Birth, life and death are described in vivid unflinching detail – this is not a book for the faint-hearted. It’s a compelling and immersive reading experience. Nothing, but nothing, is spared the reader. Some passages are really hard to stay with as they give rise to an almost physical reaction. The language is, in its way, lyrical, with a wide vocabulary, which I understand the translation does full justice to. Muliebral, telluric, eclose – I admire anyone who can read this book without once resorting to a dictionary. It’s a harsh book with virtually no redeeming features – family feeling, love and romance are singularly lacking. It was very nearly a 5* book for me, until I felt that the author somewhat lost his way at the end. Up to then the book was one of sheer physicality, but a slightly mythical element creeps in in the very last section, and I didn’t find this so satisfying. But overall, I think it’s an amazing novel, original and intelligent, and one that will long stay with me.