Brandon Taylor just knows how to craft an affecting story whether its situations are frenetic or meandering. The stories in Filthy Animals are devastating, beautiful, and full of feeling and will stay with you long after you've read them.

Brandon Taylor is a genius. I loved this collection, despite not being a huge short story fan. I loved Lionel, Charles, and Sophie. Highly recommend

Fans of Brandon Taylor’s Booker Prize–shortlisted debut “Real Life” will feel a sense of familiarity in his newest release, “Filthy Animals.” Much like that 2020 novel, “Filthy Animals” questions loneliness, trauma and intimacy at the intersection of mental health and personal suffering.

The short story collection opens with Lionel, a Black, queer graduate student who now spends his time at an unnamed Midwestern university proctoring exams. Lionel is reminiscent of Wallace, the protagonist of “Real Life,” a gay Black man from a small town in Alabama pursuing a doctorate in biochemistry at a similar Midwestern university.

“Taylor knows that Wallace sounds a lot like him,” a New York Times writer wrote last year. “Both are Black gay scientists. Both are migrants to the Midwest by way of Alabama. Both have had confusing trysts with straight men. (“My life, in some ways, is just a series of inappropriate encounters with heterosexual men,” Taylor joked.) And both have stood on the precipice of a scientific career and had to ask whether to walk back or leap.”

“Write what you know,” the saying goes, and both Wallace’s and Lionel’s stories feel painstakingly authentic. Taylor’s prose hums with energy, and the reading experience expands from a textual happening to an immersive experience.

Lionel, Charles and Sophie intermingle in stand-alone stories that together share a sense of mutual concerns. Even further, each character is connected in some disparate way. There’s “Little Beast,” a story in which a nanny named Sylvia attempts to tame a wild little girl, who reminds her a little too much of herself. “She knows what it is like to be trapped inside a thing, a life,” Taylor writes. “It’s the kind of life Sylvia would like to live, but she knows it’s the kind of life that is impossible because the world can’t abide a raw woman.” (It is later discovered that Sylvia is the doctor of one of Charles’ dance classmates.)

“As Though That Were Love” is a story that thrives on empty space and things not said. More is learned from looking between the lines of dialogue. “Filthy Animals,” the title story, follows Milton, a young man leaving soon for an educational enrichment program. He and his friend Nolan head out to a party, and dark, dirty antics ensue. The collection is one of people trying to navigate intimacy, desire, cruelty and alienation.

Along with the overarching story, one rife with so much tension and discomfort it leaps from the page, you get snippets into the lives of an intriguing set of characters. They are woven together with a gossamer of connectivity in a “six degrees of separation” type of way. “Filthy Animals” touches on the soft underbelly of human existence, showing the animalistic qualities we all share. How we all struggle to make meaningful connections, have a sense of dignity and deal with pain. Taylor can write beyond the story of a lone Black man in academia. Like “Real Life,” “Filthy Animals” is written almost in real time, taking place over hours or days and transforming the mundane aspects of life into something meaningful.

“Filthy Animals” could read as a single story. Yet, Taylor chose not to write another novel. And that is where the magic lies in “Filthy Animals.” That intention should be noted.

So as far as short stories go, Brandon Taylor should teach a master class. They’re that good. Many of them, and my personal favorites, revolve around Lionel, the fragile, black graduate student post suicide attempt who enters into choppy relationship waters with a couple. Following Lionel is a study in loneliness while bracing as he dips his feet in a pool of sharks.
Like ‘Real Life’, Taylor mines any scene for maximum intimacy, creating an immediate connection with his characters, many stories tethering to the world of our initial protagonist.
His stories don’t fall into the trap of so many of the genre, either ending too soon, or with a drop off that leaves you hanging and feeling completely unsatisfied.
My only complaint was wanting some to continue in a full length format. Just a damn great writer.

Filthy Animals is structured like a piece of music.

Several of the stories interconnect, like movements on a theme. Interspersed are separate stories, stand alone tales. Bridges between movements.

Taylor's writing is beautiful. Vivid. I found every story in this collection to be brilliantly crafted and evocative and I look forward to reading them over again, revisiting Taylor's writing, immersing myself in his brilliantly crafted prose once more.

Every other story in FILTHY ANIMALS is part of a broader narrative, while the rest are self-contained short stories. Taylor's writing is intelligent and insightful with brilliant imagery and incisive observations of humanity. The stories are intimate and at times brutal. If you enjoy literary fiction, this collection is for you!

As for me, I was reminded why I don't often read literary or short fiction. Without a compelling plot, I don't get invested, so these short character studies and slice-of-life stories don't do much for me. Of course, I still appreciate Taylor's intelligence and talent and stand by my first paragraph, which is why I've gone with a high rating. Those who enjoy this type of writing will get to sink their teeth into some good stuff with FILTHY ANIMALS.

Taylor’s writing is incredible. The book is a set of linked stories about young individuals in the midwest. It touches on suicide, sexuality, cancer, violence and more. Brandon Taylor manages to link all these very different, yet similar stories together in a smooth, mind boggling way. I cried, laughed, got angry and was incredibly frustrated throughout the course of this book.

“He was grateful he hadn’t betrayed himself by feeling more than he’d let himself feel.”

I loved this book so much that even though I read it on Kindle I feel compelled to pick up a physical copy.

The writing is gorgeous, lyrical and evocative without being overly ornate. The tone throughout is melancholy and tense, with moments of humor, hints of hope, and shocking bursts of violence. Taylor is an absolute master at depicting loneliness, the search for intimacy and belonging, and the minute cruelties we—sometimes defensively—inflict upon each other. And just as in Real Life, his portrayal of social anxiety again was so real and close to home that it hit like a gut punch.

Half the stories in the collection are linked and involve the same universe of characters, and those alternate with standalone stories. I don’t always love short story collections because I find myself having trouble getting invested, but this was a brilliant structure for maintaining dramatic tension and propelling me through the book. That said, I also loved the standalone stories and they totally held up for me despite my investment in the linked plotline.

Pairings: For the tone, the closely observed representation of a place, and the beautiful character dynamics, I’d recommend That Old Country Music by Kevin Barry. And since many of the stories involve high-level classically trained dancers and include allusions to the pressures and pathologies of that world, I found myself thinking repeatedly of Turning Pointe by Chloe Angyal.

Thanks to NetGalley and Riverhead Books for an ARC of this title.

What a fantastic collection of short stories. Everyone in this book has blown up their life in some way or another, and this sits with them and shows the consequences of that in slices of their life. A recurring set of characters populates every other story, with other one-off stories filling in other shades of the way people and relationships can be messy. Brandon Taylor's writing does a great job of capturing detail and bringing these characters to life.

Filthy Animals is one of the most anticipated books of the year, and it absolutely lives up to the hype.

The collection opens with a story about a man named Lionel, who has hit a particularly difficult point in his life, and who meets two dancers in an open relationship at a friend’s potluck dinner. Every alternating story in the collection returns to these three characters, which, strung together, could have even become a novella. I really liked this format, the promise that we will come back and learn more about them, return to the near-tangible tension between them, see what happens next. But all the other stories in the collection are incredible, too, as one would expect from Brandon Taylor.

I feel, now, that I could recognize Taylor’s writing anywhere, just by the level of detail he includes on every page. His writing zooms in on practically everything, which draws meaning and poignancy out of the otherwise mundane. Reading his stories, I feel like I could be an ant inside them, viewing every surface, every facial expression, every moment from close up. And then he zooms out when it comes to dialogue, letting every word ring and echo in hollow space. The result is both quiet and loud.

This is one of those books where I think the back-cover blurb is especially on the nose: “Psychologically taut and quietly devastating,” and “a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it.” I really can’t sum it up any better than that.


CONTENT WARNINGS:
Description of suicide attempt and suicidal thoughts (central theme); Rape (off screen/recounted later); Pedophilia (briefly remembered); Bulimia (described in the past); Terminal illness; Racism and homophobia

Filthy Animals is an incredible short story collection from one of my new favorite authors. I loved Real Life, and these stories just affirmed how great of a writer Brandon Taylor is. He's talked about how he's more comfortable writing short stories, and I could tell. He writes with ease and frankness; his work is some where I can visibly notice how every word is chosen delicately, and how the author edits himself to tell the story in it's best way.

Brandon Taylor is one of the greatest living writers we have, period. This story collection is passionate, visceral, and searing in its depictions of longing. No one can set a scene like Brandon Taylor. His prose is at once sumptuous and piercing. Overall, what’s truly wild is that this is only Taylor’s second work. I implore you all to pick this up. It’s a treat, especially for short story lovers like myself, and I can’t wait to dive back in while I await whatever he’s cooking up next.

I appreciated these stories, the way they were linked and so effectively captured a particular kind of situation. There's something about education as a path out that is almost a trope, but it can also grind people down and disillusion them, especially black people and queer people, who are centered in these stories. The stories were melancholy through and through, and as I read I kept finding myself telling the characters to speak honestly for one, without clouding words in layers of sarcasm or other defense. The collection did hit the same note again and again. I think the standout story is Anne of Cleves.

(My nitpicky aside is that nearly all the "inside details" of the recurring mathematician character were off. Mathematicians rarely study under Nobel laureates (no Nobel for math), they give talks at conferences rather than presenting papers, and there are no nominations for the Fields Medal. Maybe these details will be fixed in final edits as I read an ARC but one pass from someone with math knowledge would have fixed all this!)

Filthy Animals is a collection of vaguely interconnected short stories about a loosely connected group of young LGBTQ people mostly based in the Midwest. If there is a main character across the eleven stories, it is Lionel, a suicidal mathematician turned college exam proctor, who makes several appearances and is the focus of the opening and closing chapters. Lionel is placed in the middle of a sexual tug of war between two dance students, Charles and Sophie, who also appear as recurring characters. There are a number of other queer persons that populate the pages of Brandon Taylor’s writing in smaller spaces, such as Alek, a fellow dancer who briefly dates Sophie, Milton, a teenager in Alabama who is afraid of coming to terms with his own sexuality, and Grace, a 20-something year-old who has been diagnosed with an inoperable tumor living with her spiteful grandparents. If you’ve read any lists of anticipated books for this year and this summer, in particular, there’s no doubt Filthy Animals is near the top of them all. It’s always a little strange to me when books of collected fiction make these lists (six of the 11 stories have been previously published in some capacity), because how can you anticipate something that has already been released?

There are passages of great beauty in Filthy Animals, such as a paragraph in “Little Beast” where a girl reminisces about a song passed down from her grandmother that had shaped the voices of her entire family line; instead of a natural soprano, it transforms the singing voices of the women in the family to become warm and deep. Taylor has a keen ability to transcribe ephemeral senses into the written word, such as when, in a later story, he describes a doctor’s office has holding a “that bitter, burned hazelnut coffee smell.” There are more phrases like this; phrases that are new and original but feel familiar, as if there is no other way to describe these daily sites and rituals we all share. Despite all this beauty, I, personally, found the collection rather lacking. The most disappointing part of this reading experience for me is that I think if I had discovered this book six or seven years ago, I would have found a deep emotional connection—as a college aged individual trying to understand and seize the world. For whatever reason, I’m currently at a place in my life when the trials and tribulations of graduate students is something I couldn’t care less about. I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten or 20 years my feelings reverse on this again and I find the wonder in these young adults attempting to divine meaning in the world. In fact, I hope so.

The other piece I struggled with, that got worse and worse the farther into the book I read, is the incredible lack of joy throughout these pages. It’s no secret that most LGBTQ literature is quite dark and depressing; as any minority group that has faced discrimination will have in their fiction and collective consciousness, but the timing is off. I would never encourage anyone to stop writing lamenting stories or songs (they can be the best!), but in 2021 when it comes to the LGBTQ canon I would much more prefer fare that normalizes, celebrates and gives these characters a piece of lasting happiness. I found by the final three stories, I was dreading turning the page, afraid of what terror might befall these characters. In the last story, the conclusion of Lionel’s character, we learn that Lionel has difficulty using the telephone because of his social anxiety—look, all millennials hate talking on the phone, guilty, but this is not something that should be dropped as character background with four pages left in a book! Looking back on the 100 some odd pages spent with Lionel it’s difficult to see any kind of growth in him as a person. Short stories don’t necessarily need to convey character development—they function as a snapshot of a life, but Lionel (and by extension Charles and Sophie) is the protagonist of a novella and I expect some sort of change to come over him at some point.

Perhaps I came in expecting something different than what the book is, and that’s my fault. I was expecting A Visit from the Good Squad and instead got a traditional collection of short stories with (very) slight overlap. Taylor’s prose is crisp, but the plotting is a drudge. There are spaces for depressing (and unfortunately real!) stories in LGBTQ fiction, A Little Life-style, but this short book was a slog to get through after the first four or five stories.

In FILTHY ANIMALS, every other story follows Lionel, who was recently released from the hospital after a suicide attempt, and Sophie and Charles, two dancers who are in an open relationship. The thread of their story—which explores intimacy, cruelty, frailty, longing, and the interconnection of all of those things—is both beautifully written and uncomfortably tense. The rest of the stories are one-off character studies, including my favorite from the collection, "Anne of Cleves." I think what draws me to Brandon Taylor's writing is his ability to describe the weight of the everyday; a look between a mother and child, a moment spent lounging in the sun with a lover, the tension between two teenagers on a hill getting high. The entire collection is beautiful and melancholic and I highly recommend it, with the caution that it's not for the faint of heart (there's a reason I kicked this off with trigger warnings).

A side note: one of the things that I loved about REAL LIFE and now FILTHY ANIMALS is how Brandon Taylor writes about Madison. As someone who lived there as a straight, white, middle-class undergrad, reading Brandon Taylor's books has given me the opportunity to experience the town through the lens of so many different eyes. I loved following Lionel, Sophie, and Charles around campus, through the buildings where I took dance and English classes, and then jumping into a story that takes place in the spaces beyond campus; suburban homes, out in the "country," "up north." The book felt like a snapshot of all the diverse lives that can be lived simultaneously in a single space.

Brandon Taylor has a gift for writing and developing the most real yet flawed characters. For that reason, this book is extremely difficult for me to rate. There were so many times I wanted to scream out loud and throw the book out the window (same with Real Life).

The one aspect of the story that was a bit confusing was the jump in short stories. Sometimes you saw characters show up a few times and other times only once for a few pages. The flow was a bit off for me.

I think if you are a fan of Brandon Taylor’s writing you will probably enjoy his latest work quite a bit. Personally, I need to find at least one character to fall in love with and this was not the book in which that happened.
A big thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead Books for allowing me to read an early copy of this book!

I don’t usually like short story collections, but I enjoyed this one. Possibly it’s because half the stories were linked in an almost continuous narrative. I definitely will read more of Taylor’s work after this.

I didn't connect with this quite as much as I did Real Life, but also it's Brandon Taylor so I still loved it. This felt a lot grittier in terms of depictions of sex, relationships, depression, and trauma, so if those parts of Real Life were not your jam I'm not sure this collection will work for you. I particularly enjoyed the interconnected short stories, as they put me back into the grad school bubble Taylor captured so well in Real Life and I was fascinated by the explorations of lust and companionship. I also enjoyed the story "Anne of Cleaves," as that struck me as the most unique out of the collection.

Thank you to Brandon Taylor and Riverhead (Penguin Random House) for providing me with a free early copy of this work through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Filthy Animals comes out on June 22.

This was a novella interspersed with short stories, addressing sexuality, mortality, mental health, vocation, and so much more. I loved his earlier book Real Life so was really excited to get an early copy of this!

The primary story tells of Lionel, who survived a suicide attempt a year earlier, and meets dancers Charles and Sophie at a party, and ends up in a complicated position in their open relationship. I'm glad this was the novella, because it took me a little bit to get into the story, and I really liked how each installment delved into the story and even brought out perspectives of minor characters.

I think my favorite short story was Anne of Cleves, because I loved the main character and her process of self-discovery and growth. Also as a huge fan of the Tudor era, I enjoyed how they connected personalities to Henry VIII's wives.

As with any collection of short stories, this was sometimes hard to get momentum. But Brandon Taylor is a great writer, and he brings these characters and stories to life.

Extraordinary follow up to REAL LIFE. There is a palpable sense of purpose to Taylor’s writing. I continued to be enthralled by Taylor’s use of language which is both imminently readable, but also reveal profound observations about human desire and frustrations.