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Animal begins with a bang. in its opening pages, our 37-year old protagonist joan is having dinner with her new married lover, when her former married lover walks in and shoots himself in front of her. spurred on by this event, joan flees new york and embarks on a journey to los angeles, searching for a young woman named alice who can help to unravel the secrets of joan’s past.

all in all, Animal is a raw and unflinching story of female rage, a look at how simply living life as a woman can drive you to breaking point. but what makes the novel so compelling is that joan’s rage is compulsively subtle; it’s a simmering melting pot teetering on the edge of explosion. and even when, inevitably, it does explode, the explosion is equally as subdued, a blink of an eye to mark joan’s shift of always being the prey into her being the predator.

the novel’s main focus is an exploration of the relationship between women’s trauma and the culture of sexual violence, and joan as a character acts as a vehicle to portray how these experiences manifest into our own actions and behaviour.

Animal is one woman’s story, but it can also be any woman’s story, too. through its brutal examination of power dynamics, sexual politics, and the insidious nature of rape culture, it is easy to find relatability somewhere in this book, even if it’s just from the ‘smaller� indignities of sexual violence that we’re taught to just brush off. joan is a manifestation of the animal that women are taught to repress throughout their lives, an allegorical portrayal of the anger, pain, and strength that comes along with womanhood, of being pushed just far enough that you need to sink your teeth into something.

in line with its themes, the book is dark and brutal, with some rather harrowing scenes that are not for the faint of heart. but Animal is an example of a literary thriller done right, particularly with its masterful pacing. the suspenseful twists are subtle, but compelling enough to keep you flipping the pages until the end. with the blistering atmospheric writing of Emma Cline and the raw characterisation of Ottessa Moshfegh, Animal is a female rage story that is simultaneously quiet and thrilling.