Animal Crackers | Hannah Tinti | a pitch-perfect debut

Animal Crackers | Hannah Tinti | Entertainingly Macabre

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Animal Crackers

	Animal Crackers Hannah Tinti Delta, 2005 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

With bravura storytelling, daring imagination, and fierce narrative control, this dazzling debut introduces that rare writer who finds humanity in our most unconventional behavior, and the humor beneath our darkest impulses.

In these ten strange, funny, and unnerving stories, animals become the litmus test of our deepest fears and longings. In the title story, an elephant keeper courts danger from his gentle charge; in ?Miss Waldron?s Red Colobus,? a headstrong young woman in Africa is lured by the freedom of the monkeys in the trees; in ?Talk Turkey,? a boy has secret conversations with the turkeys on his friend?s family?s farm; in ?Slim?s Last Ride,? a child plays chilling games with his pet rabbit; in ?Gallus Gallus,? a pompous husband projects his anger at his wife onto her prized rooster.

This fresh, inventive debut will introduce Hannah Tinti as one of the most gifted writers of her generation. Enter her world at your own risk, and you will come away bewitched.

From the Hardcover edition.

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a pitch-perfect debut

Reviewed by Felicia C. Sullivan, Small Spiral Notebook

Animals take center stage in the bewitching debut story collection, Animal Crackers. In these perfectly pitched eleven stories, Hannah Tinti navigates strange relationships, absurd and quirky human behavior, personal desires and obsession.

In ?Reasonable Terms?, a team of African giraffes in proper union fashion draft a list of demands to a zookeeper including improved quality of life and a more exotic d?cor. Rather displeased with the slew of demands, the zookeeper publicly refuses to negotiate for ?he couldn?t have every species writing lists and such. What, for example, would the hippos demand? Or the wombats?? The crafty giraffes retaliate and initiate a media circus by faking their own death. What unravels are our capacity for fleeting hysteria and forget ? the obsession with scandal evasion and damage control. And when the photographers leave and the headlines subside, what is left are animals carted away to another zoo. In such beautiful Orwellian fashion, Tinti gives soul and individuality to these desperate creatures.

In ?Home Sweet Home?, a dog is eyewitness to the undoing of a quiet neighborhood and its complex inhabitants. A bored and lusty housewife, Pat, grows frustrated after the death of her husband Clyde?s father leaves Clyde impotent. Left to her own devices, Pat takes up with her next door neighbor, Mr. Mitchell. A brief affair with a Venezuelan prostitute results with Mitchell?s son, Manuel. The death of the mother brings the strange boy who is most comfortable hiding sleeping in garbage bins, to the Mitchell home and soon a surprising connection occurs between the child and Mrs. Mitchell, leaving the father to the wayside. Adultery and public indiscretions lead to a satisfying climax.

Dark human behavior is paramount and constructed beautifully by Tinti in the powerful, ?Slim?s Last Ride? . A year later after a father abandons his wife and child, a small rabbit arrives on the child?s doorstep. Through the course of the story, the mother watches in horror as her son projects his rage onto his pet. In ?Gallus Gallus? , an arrogant husband takes out his anger at his wife on her prized rooster. Animals serve to painfully mitigate characters who feel they have no other outlet for their longing or frustrations. Although Tinti doesn?t shy away from the gruesome, the brutality in her stories is never gratuitous, and is an accurate mirror for one?s psychology and pathological obsessions.

Overall, the tales in Animal Crackers are fascinating and exceptionally wrought but simply narrated. In Tinti?s stories one will never fumble on convoluted language and heavy-handed magical realism with animals serving as ?tropes?, but the reader will be won over by the author?s compassion for her characters and the fantastic animals that inhabit their lives.

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Entertainingly Macabre

Hannah Tinti has written an array of entertaining dark stories. She is very talented and obviously has the gift of a very imaginative mind. For the reader that is looking for something dark and well written, this is a perfect choice for summer reading. It might as well be good for xmas, reading Animal Crackers might just make the reader a gentler, smarter person.

excellent, disturbing stories

I'm not a big fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed Hannah Tinti's debut work. Each story involves animals, sometimes as main characters, sometimes just barely. Each story does delve into the darker side of human nature. I usually race through books eager to find out what happens next. This book invites you to savor each story and really think about what is going on. All the stories don't end with pat endings. They leave you a bit hanging with just hints of what happens next. I really enjoyed her writing style.

Some stories hit everything right, like Animal Crackers. The story and characters are both memorable. Some stories like Preservation have very interesting characters but the story wasn't so keen. Each story did have something going for it-unique quirky characters or the manner of Ms. Tinti telling the story.

The book back states the book to be "strange, funny, and unnerving." I originally took that to mean humorous. After reading the book, I know that they mean funny as weird or strange. I liked least the stories that left one wondering if the character was going crazy- the woman who kept seeing her cadaver or the woman who thought the stuffed bear was tracking her. I know it was symbolic, but I thought it could have been better expressed.

All in all, a highly enjoyable read. Maybe I'll give more short stories a try!!

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Vivacious, humanistic account

Amazing! I don't like short stories but this collection spoke to me. Hannah Tinti is an amazing writer! She uses the animals in such a way that we see the human emotions below the surface and react to our own feelings that they evoke. Can't wait for her next book!!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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