The God of Animals

Aryn Kyle`s preternaturally auspicious debut novel, THE GOD OF ANIMALS (born of a Atlantic Monthly Fiction Award-winning short short-story), perfectly captures the disillusioning enlightenment of adolescence. Twelve-year-old Alice Winston lives on an impoverished Colorado horse ranch with her melancholic bed-ridden mother and inattentive father. Her ravishing older sister has run off with a cowboy, and one of Alice`s schoolmates has shown up dead in a canal. Slowly, surely, the adult world reveals its treacherous nature to Alice: she becomes involved with one of her teachers, her sister returns from her elopement, her father becomes romantic with a rich client. With a magnificent sense of place, personality, and pathos, Kyle delineates the treacherous emotional tightrope Alice must walk, and her inner oscillation between tenacity and fragility gives the novel a precarious beauty. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.