Updated: Tonight's reading at 21C has been canceled due to Hurricane Sandy-related flight cancelations. Sarabande Books is working on rescheduling the event for 2013.
Justin Torres' surprising and haunting debut novel "We the Animals" introduces us to three near-feral brothers and their young parents, a white mother and Puerto Rican father from Brooklyn who marry when the mother is only 14 and pregnant with the oldest boy. They move to a small town in upstate New York, where they are outsiders even among the other poor families, and struggle against the limitations of their poverty, lack of education and youth.
“They’re these city kids, this mixed-race couple, in this tiny little town,” says Torres. “There aren’t many supporting characters in this book. There are the boys, and there’s Ma and Paps, and it’s very essential in that way. I wanted it to be, to emphasize the claustrophobia of the family, how much they rely on each other and how much they can’t escape each other.”
(Read an excerpt of "We the Animals.")
