Finalist, Trillium Book Award

The stories in Animal depict people on the brink of major life change. Often at a crossroads they are oblivious to, Leggat’s characters seem to be captured in a cinematic slo-mo, teetering on the edge of something unknown, heroically resisting the ever-present pull of Fate. It matters little whether the characters take action or refuse to act; life acts for them. The reader is left to wonder: When does “meaning” cease to have meaning? Like travelling a mountain highway at night, what’s just around the next bend is never known. The stories in Animal never fail to deliver potent surprises.

Praise for Animal:

“I’m tempted to say it’s a slim, distilled masterpiece.” (Michael Bryson, Underground Book Club)

“these quickly unfolding stories are elliptically drawn, tense with action and dark humour. Leggat is a shape-shifting writer” (Ibi Kaslik, The Globe and Mail)

“Alexandra Leggat’s Animal is poetic and disarming. The stories are primarily mood-driven rather than straightforward narratives – a series of emotional puzzles in which key pieces of information are often withheld until very late in the telling. The effect is to create an uneasiness about people’s relationships to one another and to the natural world. All of this is carried off in finely calibrated prose.”(Quill & Quire)