A Redacted Past Slowly Emerges
Justin Torres’s debut novel, We the Animals, quickly became a cultural phenomenon when it was published in 2011, the kind of novel that appeared on social-media feeds and celebrity reading lists. The book is a marvel—it is slim and ferocious, and proceeds at a relentless pace, as if exhaled in a single breath. Throughout, its gaze remains fixed on the life of a family in upstate New York that is struggling to remain afloat while contending with poverty, isolation, and other deprivations. The reader can guess what exists beyond the frame of this intimate portrait, the social forces shaping the life of this family, but they can never be sure: Torres’s attention does not waver from this close-up.
His second novel, , which was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction yesterday, also focuses on a close bond, this time between two people, a young man and a much older one. But incorporates photographs, scripts, and other literary fragments to reclaim history—particularly queer history—and offers important lessons about how the forgotten past might be recovered and assimilated into an understanding of the present.
