Each year publishing companies parade their first-time novelists and accompanying books in the pages of Publishers Weekly and then send the author and book out to market. The new scribes and their projects are invested with the hope – and surrounded by the hyperbole – that they might be the next major American writer, or at least the author of this generation’s “The Catcher in the Rye” or “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
While the latter is certainly the loftiest of goals, and rarely attained, the former is a reasonable goal for Aryn Kyle, author of “The God of Animals,” a coming-of-age tale both elegiac and hard-nosed.
Set in Desert Valley, Colo., the novel’s narrator is 12-year-old Alice Winston. Her father owns a horse ranch, making ends meet sometimes by boarding the horses of wealthy folks and giving riding lessons to their kids, like Sheila Altman. Alice’s mother is depressed, living life out of her bed.
For Alice, life has been full of people who leave her. First, her mother, who has left her (and the family) by retreating into her depression-driven womb; then older sister Nona, a champion rider, decides to elope with a rodeo cowboy. Worse, a schoolmate with whom Alice is acquainted, Polly Cain, drowns in a canal.
In addition to her fear of being left behind, Alice becomes obsessed with the classmate’s death. While immersed in Polly’s former life, Alice learns her father may be having an affair with Patty Jo, one of his older riding students. And when Delmar suddenly leaves town, Alice fears her father may be contemplating running off with Patty Jo. She inadvertently spills the beans, telling Sheila Altman about the affair she believes is taking place, and setting off a chain reaction that ends badly for everyone.
While it may not be the next great American novel, “The God of Animals,” a moving tale of loss and love, is certainly an admirable debut by a writer who holds the promise of one day becoming one of the more significant names in the American literary landscape.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
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FICTION
The God of Animals
Aryn Kyle
$25
