PositiveCultureflyThe connective tissue in Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals takes a little getting used to ... The thematic consistency across Filthy Animals is a positive when it comes to establishing tone and the motifs that most interest Taylor, although it does mean that a couple of the stories feel a little redundant ... a few of the disaffected characters – the men, in particular – have the tendency to blend into each other. Taylor’s melding of a continuing narrative with separate stories is interesting, but it isn’t always conducted seamlessly ... Whilst, when considered as a singular work, Filthy Animals both doesn’t quite hang together and hangs together too well, on an individual basis many of these stories are beautiful. Taylor’s prose is a beguiling mix of cool and sensual. His characters speak with a provocative, sometimes cruel bluntness that belies their vulnerable hearts. It is not a friendly world that these people inhabit; any kindnesses are stuffed deep down beneath surfaces made of grit and steel. Yet, despite their hard exteriors, despite the brusque ways in which they treat each other, you can’t help but feel for them.
Kathryn Scanlan
PanCultureFlyScanlan’s writing is such stripped back, bare-bones stuff, it makes Raymond Carver’s work seem positively baroque ... In some ways it is refreshing to read a book so lacking in adornment; Scanlan has no choice but to get straight to the point. There are no lengthy asides. No flowery descriptive passages. All the words that have made it through her ruthless cutting process are one hundred percent necessary ... And yet. While The Dominant Animal could hardly be accused of being ‘too much’, it would be just as fair to label it ‘not enough’. Brevity may have benefits, but it also has a cost ... doesn’t even seem like a collection of stories; it’s more like a collection of writer’s prompts. Very few of them have any kind of narrative arc. There’s little characterisation – only a handful of the characters even have names. Some – the best ones – read like parables. Others simply show us a place – usually a nightmarish version of a suburbia – and/or an event – often cruel, or sinister – then finish as soon as they have started. Although many have some bite to them, many are full of poetry, it’s never quite enough, somehow. You’re always left thinking, ‘Is that it?\' ... There’s nothing wrong with the prose itself – Scanlan’s writing is crisp, clean and often evocative. It’s only that when you finish each of her stories, the feeling that you get isn’t one of magic, or shock, or even satisfaction. The feeling that you get is…‘huh.’ And then you turn the page and read another one, and then another, and after you’ve gotten through a few, it’s hard to remember a pertinent detail about any one of them. Perhaps if Scanlan had chosen her best ten and developed them more, The Dominant Animal would have done a better job of satisfying the hungry reader.
