The book is a fierce attempt by a first-time author. A tale of three brothers, this is Torres’ life told anonymously

THE ANIMALS in Justin Torres’s gutsy, debut novel We The Animals are three brothers, including the anonymous narrator. Like stray dogs, they roam the streets of Upstate New York, stealing, vandalising and merrily making trouble for each other. The book is a coming-of-age novel of three mixed-race boys whose mother (Ma) is Caucasian and father (Paps) is a Puerto Rican man. This sets them apart from the other purely Caucasian children, but the difference surely does not end there. With the setting sun, while other children return to their homes and families, the three brothers stay back on the streets to have their own adventures—flying kites made from trash, wandering and pelting each other with rotten tomatoes as Ma goes to her graveyard shift at a brewery. Paps also does his two bit; taking up whatever comes his way (legal or not) sometimes tagging the children along, where they camp in abandoned flats sleeping on damp and cold floors. It is a viscerally-charged atmosphere in which the boys grow up, hiding while parents battle it out—both verbally and physically—or tiptoeing around the house as the mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. The novel begins with the unnamed narrator’s seventh birthday. A languishing Ma remembers that it is his birthday, calls him near and asks him to “stay six” forever as growing up means becoming hard: “No softness anywhere, only Paps and boys turning into Paps.” The narrator agrees and kisses his mother’s face, bloated and bruised after severe beatings of days, only to be pushed away. “She cusses me and Jesus, and the tears dropped, and I was seven.” Critics have described the book as an “exquisite, blistering debut novel” of three brothers tearing their way through childhood—following them on the pages as they learn to live on bare minimum, escape the neglect of angry parents. In this universe, familial life is chaos, heartbreaks and also euphoric. In its novel way, the book reinvents the coming-of age story making it more gut-wrenching. Written with images which are harsh, honest and stunning, the book is an exploration of brotherhood. There are wonderful bits where the three boys pretend and role play as the Three Musketeers; the Three Bears; the Three Stooges; Alvin and the Chipmunks; and even as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.