Animal Crackers - Hardcover

Tinti, Hannah

3.64

751 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0755307445 ISBN 13: 9780755307449

Publisher: Headline Review, 2004

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A zoo worker, cautiously washing down Marysue the elephant, thinks of the strange, grim stories his co-workers have told him about their lives. Giraffes in another zoo demand better living conditions and stage a mock group suicide to attract public notice. A girl escapes her repressive finishing school by running off with her lover to the African jungle - but takes longer to give the slip to the private detectives hired by her father. Hannah Tinti's debut collection combines the virtues of traditional story-telling with utter freshness and modernity. Snake or dog, buffalo or turkey, the animals in her brilliant, darkly comic stories are never cute, as they hold up a disturbing mirror to the human beings around them.

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Review:

Animals play the starring roles in Tinti's striking debut collection... 11 highly original, sometimes gorgeous stories... A redeeming generosity underlies the harsher realities in these stories (Publishers Weekly)

While Tinti writes well about things that slither and crawl, what's most impressive is her understanding of human loneliness These stories resonate with one mournful grace-note after another... Tinti delivers with poise uncommon among first-time writers. Like Edgar Allan Poe and Patricia Highsmith, [she] has a brilliant feel for the uncanny (Scotland on Sunday)

[A] lovely and exotic zoo of short stories... Funny, off the wall, economical and bright with inventive language... This is my advice to reluctant short story readers: buy this collection for the bus into town, for the 20-minute train journey, for the five minutes before you go to sleep at night, and you will have animal fun all day and in your dreams at night (Leeds Guide)

'Hannah Tinti is who you want around a campfire or on a long road trip. The stories in ANIMAL CRACKERS will make your head spin, your skin crawl, your heart jump'

Helen Ellis (author of EATING THE CHESHIRE CAT)

Tinti can hook a reader with a first sentence (New York Metro)

'These are marvelous stories. Hard-edged, big-hearted, they glitter and gleam with a rare clarity of vision. Hannah Tinti is a generous and enormously gifted writer. She will make you see the world differently'

Dani Shapiro (author of FAMILY HISTORY and PLAYING WITH FIRE)

'Hannah Tinti is not just a masterly writer - though her wondrous debut certainly proves her to be that.
No, what really floors you is the span, the variegation of her gifts. This book reads like a first-class greatest hits compilation, the work of many distinct, enviable virtuosi. ANIMAL CRACKERS ushers in the arrival of a giant'

Darin Strauss (author of CHANG & ENG)

Children and beasts of all sorts dominate Hannah Tinti's first book... a quirky, often disturbing collection. Hers is a world where things are jarringly out of kilter, a world of transformation, casual violence and twisted feelings... Animals and humans alike, Tinti gets under their skin (Daily Mail (Lee Langley))

'Exhibiting a range and control unusual for a young writer, in ANIMAL CRACKERS Hannah Tinti offers nearly a dozen tales: sweetly macabre, adroitly surprising. You'd be crackers yourslf not to indulge'

Gregory Maguire (author of WICKED, MIRROR MIRROR, LOST and CONFESSIONS OF AN UGLY STEP-SISTER)

Don't be deceived by the animals prancing about the cover of this short-story collection. There are dark, dark tales within... Tinti laces her stories with a fine thread of black humour... Refreshingly original, bold and accomplished (Glasgow Herald)

From the Publisher:

Headline's beautifully designed edition pinpoints the arresting quality of Hannah Tinti's stories : Victorian Gothic brought up to date.

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