RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksTaylor is uniquely adept at capturing the discomforting feeling of being out of place at a social gathering ... Perhaps it is Taylor’s scientific background that allows him to anatomize social interactions so effectively (he left a graduate program in biochemistry to pursue a writing career) ... For anyone worried that a scientific background might lend itself to a stilted, lifeless prose, I can assure you that the stories in this collection pulse with life. Neither cold nor detached, these stories are suffused with a warmth and humanity that recalled for me the uncanniness of Raymond Carver, the empathy of Alice Munro, and the meticulous irony of Chekhov ... There is indeed much of Chekhov in these stories — in their revealing details, in the way events gradually build and unspool, in the author’s close observation that plumbs the depths of human behavior ... Taylor’s gift for close, empathetic observation can be found especially in the linked stories in this collection ... as stand-alone pieces they made less of an impact on me compared to the richer, more three-dimensional portraits we get in the linked stories. Taylor is proficient at narrative compression, a skill showcased in the shorter pieces, but he shines most, I think, when given the leisure to revisit characters and their interpersonal dynamics, usually from different vantage points, to apply additional layers of perspective to relationships we thought we understood on first sight ... Events in one story have repercussions, later on in the collection, in another. The effect is a bit like watching a chain reaction occurring in slow motion. By and large, the stories in Filthy Animals are patient and quiet — until they’re not. These stories are not flashy, there are no postmodern tricks, just a masterful grasp of pacing that gradually builds tension toward an inevitable eruption ... Reading the 11 stories, I found myself thinking of the painter Paul Cézanne. I thought of the way he would approach even the simplest of still-life subjects — a bowl of apples, say — with a meticulous, almost obsessive desire to render it as faithfully as possible. Taylor’s portraits exhibit the same kind of attention to quotidian detail, the same solidity and fullness and depth. Taylor is rarely content to allow one perspective to dominate in his writing. He considers his characters from multiple viewpoints, from all angles, meticulously layering brush stroke on brush stroke, returning, like Cézanne, to the same themes, the same dynamics, the same subjects, again and again.
