Praise for A Real Animal
“A young woman navigates her desires in the wake of a sexual assault in the propulsive and stunning debut from Atwood…Readers will be held captive by Lucy’s exciting voice.”
—Publishers Weekly (STARRED review)
“Emeline Atwood's A Real Animal is a strange and astonishing and entirely original book, full of darkness shot through with light, wild and tender. Atwood writes brilliantly about our interior, personal wildernesses, the snarling, wounded animal at the heart of any person. Lucy is an unforgettable narrator: compelling, terrifying, lovable, surprising, human. She, and this book, are extraordinary.”
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book
“Emeline Atwood's Lucy is a marvelous, maddening, monstrous creation, and A Real Animal is an irresistible whirlpool of a novel.”
—Joy Williams, author of The Quick and The Dead
“This book knocked my socks off with an unreliable (but weirdly relatable) narrator who keeps making bad decisions, but you root for nonetheless”
—Jillian Quint, PureWow
"Brave and fantastic . . . This unforgettable first work is visceral, fearless, relentless and confrontational. Lucy’s story is heartbreaking and terrible, singular and mundane, and honestly rendered. Atwood’s prose is rich, and the novel is cleverly crafted and interestingly organized, revealing Lucy’s life in compelling ways page by page. A Real Animal is gorgeous, frightening and highly recommended."
—Sarah Rachel Egelman, Book Reporter
“A fearless debut that winningly defies conventional form … An intense and unpredictable novel about the bestial essence that simmers within, A Real Animal showcases the entrails of the human spirit in all their complicated, blistering glory.”
—Emma Leokadia Walkiewicz, Girls on the Page
“Unexpected and fantastic...A Real Animal is an impressive, utterly absorbing read.”
—Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle
“Wow, this book is truly phenomenal…I could not put it down, not even for a second. Reading it felt like a fever dream.”
—Danielle Kate Wroe, The Daily Mirror
"Stunning . . . A Real Animal depicts violence and trauma in a refreshing, often surprising way—a captivating, remarkable debut."
—Sam Franzini, Our Culture
“This novel hurts. It hurt me to read it…But A Real Animal is also playful and daring and entirely unpredictable while simultaneously being so on point in depicting mundane emotions. In Lucy I recognized the self-conscious fear that the whole room is looking at you or talking about you behind your back, even when really no one is thinking about you that hard…oh how I ached on her behalf.”
—Maris Kreizman, Maris Review
"In a moment when we often find ourselves numb and distracted, Emeline Atwood has given us an enlivening and powerful novel about what it means to dwell and be changed. It gets under your skin. Atwood is an ambitious writer, as at home in the colloquial as she is in the lyrical. A tremendous accomplishment."
—Stephanie Wambugu, author of Lonely Crowds
"The gorgeous writing in A Real Animal makes its protagonist's risky behavior all the more harrowing-Lucy's intelligence does not necessarily protect her. I feared for the young woman with the extravagant sense of what intimacy looks like, creating near-constant suspense in this powerful debut."
—Amy Hempel, author of Reasons to Live
“Lucy’s human life is painted in exquisite detail, relatable for all, which grounds the magical realism without missing a beat, making for a cathartic and innovative construction.”
—Booklist
“With its textured, organic, and precise prose and its complex, darling narrator, A Real Animal is a beautiful ache that I will recognise forever.”
—Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Worry Doll
“I can’t stop reading this book…I wasn’t surprised to see that Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review. This is an author to watch.”
—Kathleen Schmidt, Publishing Confidential
“Emeline Atwood has created a psychologically credible and deeply vulnerable protagonist, more human (and ultimately more likeable) for the way the author refuses to allow victimhood to flatten a character into a category.”
—Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp, The Sydney Morning Herald
“Emeline Atwood’s debut novel stirs with edgy sex, anger, and transcendence.”
—Hamilton Cain, TIME
“Raw and captivating, this bildungsroman is more rewarding than most others out there.”
—Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture
"As Atwood leaps from one moment in Lucy’s life to another, she captures painfully relatable snippets of experience and frustrating disconnects candidly. Her characters express and encapsulate complex – at times unsavory – emotions in an unapologetic light that manages to hold deep understanding without offering excuses . . . The connection [Lucy] makes between herself and the animal world serves as a tethering promise that not everything can be neatly explained and accounted for."
—Caroline Drew, The Austin Chronicle
"Emeline Atwood is a breathtaking writer, and her first novel is a lithe, muscular, and beautifully dangerous tour de force."
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Encounters with Unexpected Animals
“A Real Animal is eminently relatable in its poignant portrayal of the decade between 20 and 30 years of age, a period that feels endless and temporal, when one is confronting the mundanity and magic of the world. In Atwood's capable hands, readers will recognize Lucy's search for safety and meaning, and the appeal of a new reality as a way to not only cope with trauma but also confront the very nature of truth and womanhood. This remarkable, emotional novel announces an author to watch."
—Shelf Awareness (STARRED review)
“A coming-of-age tale of Homeric Odysseian proportions, A Real Animal is a typhonic stunner of a debut. If Lily King wrote the screenplay for an Ari Aster film, it would look ALMOST something like A Real Animal, but it is also totally original. Not one to miss.”
—The Southern Bookseller Review
“An exceptionally rare talent- more, please! I think Emeline Atwood is a genius. In fact, I know she is. You’ll know, too, once you’re about 5 pages into A Real Animal. This is The Big One, folks.”
—Cristin Stickles, Strand Book Store (New York, NY)
“A powerhouse. Atwood’s book is simply one of the best books I’ve read since I started covering books. She perfectly writes the turbulent time when one finishes college and enters “adulthood” – whatever that means.”
—Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful
“This is the book you’ll see clutched between the chipped nails of every cool girl this summer.”
— Sophia June, Marie Claire
""Perhaps even more impressive than Atwood’s ability to hook readers is how clearly the beginning of A Real Animal outlines the novel’s scope and focus on love and violence, nature and instinct, selfhood and family . . . A beautiful and unflinching look into pain, healing, human nature, and what it means to be a person . . . Sharp, memorable, and wrought with a kind of stark honesty that makes for an instantly compelling character . . . A magnificent debut."
—Devyn Andrews, Chicago Review of Books
"This is a book that is a caliber above and beyond what we have come to expect from the young-twenties-girl-bildungsroman. There’s men, yes, and sex, a lot of it, and yearning to be understood, and for power and a place in the world, but A Real Animal is about the wild, deep, feral core of those themes . . . The book has this feeling about it, like there’s so much within the pages that’s just bursting to get out: a violent and powerful urge for something, for more survival, for more agency, to express one’s pain, to feel better. A Real Animal is as raw and visceral as an open-mouthed scream: you hear it in your bones. You can see its teeth."
—Julia Hass, Literary Hub
“It’s an astonishing debut with a compelling voice.”
—Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
“Atwood’s debut is a refreshing take on what it means to come of age in a world that feels both unpredictable and stagnant.”
—Library Journal (STARRED review)