So yes, Joan might be depraved but her depravity comes from circumstances out of her control. Also, the narrative of Animal takes the form of Joan’s account of her life to pass onto her daughter. Joan’s mother didn’t give her the love and security she needed as a child or as an adult, so Joan literally spends her life trying to placate that feeling within herself. To me, Animal was also an exploration of the complex mother/daughter relationship. She is the daughter of Joan’s dead lover, blames Joan for her family falling apart and is hell-bent on revenge… The mother / daughter conundrum She interacts with her fellow tenants on the isolated commune-type place where she lives, her developing relationship with Alice and the unexpected arrival of Eleanor. The tension and interest then builds as the story follows Joan. I have something to tell you, and you have something to tell me. Half sister Alice is 27 to Joan’s 37 and they become instant friends, despite Alice not knowing their true relationship:ĭear Alice, I have had a lifetime of suffering.
This triggers her to relook at her life and try and find her half sister she has never met before (the product of her father’s affair).Ĭuriosity is something that has always driven me. Joan (a wildly underused name by the way – in fiction and life) is in a not-very-healthy relationship with an older married man, actually the poor sod of the opening sentence.
Opening sentence: I drove myself out of New York City where a man shot himself in front of me. I was referring to her uninhibited, raw, sexual and honest approach to her life. That’s not the perspective I mean though. Animal is told to us by Joan, a woman in her mid-30s who, among other things, moves from New York to LA to find her half sister. I love it when you discover stories told from a perspective you haven’t read from before.
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