In “Animal”, Lisa Taddeo’s narrator exacts revenge on men
Animal. By Lisa Taddeo. 336 pages; $27.99. Bloomsbury Circus; £16.99
IN “THREE WOMEN”, Lisa Taddeo’s first book (published in 2019), she recounted the often disturbing sexual histories of three American women whom the author had spent years interviewing. Her decision to write from the perspective of her subjects—but in the third person, traditionally a novelistic approach—made it hard to gauge the extent of her creative licence. But the main criticism of her mostly well-received book involved its focus on characters who seemed to have little or no agency. A middle-aged restaurateur is coerced by her husband into sleeping with other men. A young woman goes to court to accuse her former teacher, a married father, of having groomed her for sex.
As if by way of balance, Ms Taddeo has now swung to the other extreme, with a compulsive debut novel narrated by a wronged woman out to avenge the abuse of male power. Joan is 36 and on the run from New York after the gory death (in mysterious circumstances) of Vic, her older, married lover. Lying low in California, she falls in with Lenny, a widower suffering from dementia. In his confusion, Lenny mistakes Joan for the wife he ill-treated; the crimes to which he confesses boost her resolve to find redress for the miseries she has endured.
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