[A] clever novel...The [novel within a novel] framework enables Braunstein to implicitly pose the questions: Who gets to tell your story? Whose stories can you trust?...In a book with supple writing throughout, [Braunstein] also evokes the state's climate and its landscape in singular ways...It's a credit to Braunstein's craft that this tale, filled with incisive observations and often amusingly unflattering revelations about a few primary players, is also leavened with tenderness.--Carol Iaciofano Aucion "WBUR"

...Braunstein fashions a red-hot poker that skewers the limits of the white imagination...[A] sharp-witted, ravishing novel.--Claire Luchette "New York Times Book Review"

Full of ideas, plot, verve, interesting scenes, and good writing...A writer to watch.-- "Kirkus"

Exploring themes of appropriation, obsession, and control, Braunstein's tangled novel will leave readers unsettled.-- "Booklist"

Wise, wily, intriguing, and so much fun, Bad Animals mesmerized me. I did not want it to end. This is Braunstein at her very best.--Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers

Bad Animals opens with a delightful shock, and then the fun begins. With deft, sly, loving insight into the human animal and its genius for self-deception, Braunstein ratchets up and sustains this extraordinary novel's elegance and complexity until the last, beautiful sentence.--Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and Welcome Home, Stranger

Sarah Braunstein's Bad Animals is a dazzling high-wire act. Absolutely chilling.--Richard Russo, author of Somebody's Fool

Bad Animals is a story of intrigue, and mystery, and love. Above all, it's about the lies we tell each other--and the ones we tell ourselves. It's best book yet by one of my favorite writers--haunting, unsettling, and unforgettable.--Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of Good Boy and coauthor of Mad Honey

Wild, wicked, whip-smart, hilarious--Bad Animals brought out the hungry reader in me and I devoured it, blissfully. Sarah Braunstein is tough and tender in equal measure: unsparing on the subjects of whiteness, literary lions, and good intentions, yet so large-hearted that this giddy misadventure cannot help but turn moving in the most true and abiding way.--Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, author of Likes

Bad Animals kept me up all night for its gorgeous prose, its breathtaking insights into human nature, and its fresh, original page-turning plot. What a triumph.--Monica Wood, author of The One-In-a-Million Boy

With a high-wire plot that's beautifully built and slyly rendered, Bad Animals interrogates the insanely high costs of self-deception and offers us a supremely wise and damn funny story of bravery in the face of abject longing.--Susan Conley, author of Landslide

Braunstein makes Maeve's emotions palpable as she attempts to clear her name and deal with her empty nester woes. [Bad Animals] has plenty of charm.-- "Publishers Weekly"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2024-03-19

Length: 304 pages