Customer Reviews

Animal Crackers

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"Everyone who works with animals has a mark somewhere," observes an elephant keeper in the title story of Hannah Tinti's debut short story collection, ANIMAL CRACKERS. For some these marks are physical --- Sandy, who is in charge of the monkey house, has a scar across her face where a gorilla bit her; another elephant keeper has lost an arm. But for others, the marks are deeply psychological: Mike, a failed poet, trains sea lions and tries to pawn his chapbooks to zoogoers, and Ann sells tickets while obsessively guarding her bald cat.

"Animal Crackers" is a fitting introduction to the ten stories that follow, all of which explore characters' relationships with various animals and how they locate meaning in giraffes at the zoo, a neighbor's cat, a stuffed bear in a museum, or an ex-boyfriend's snake. Tinti, who co-founded and edits the literary magazine One Story, mines these human/animal interactions for surprisingly effective metaphors that eloquently reveal her characters' views of themselves and the world around them.

In "Reasonable Terms," three giraffes go on strike for better habitat conditions. Lying prone on the ground, their eyes rolled back and their tongues lolling out, they play dead and refuse to entertain their audiences. The predicament causes the zookeeper to reflect on his own marriage: "The zookeeper looked at the animals prostrate in the dirt and was reminded of pre-Darwinian concepts of evolution --- that the length of giraffes' necks was determined by stretching to obtain what they desire. He wondered if this kind of despair was inside Matilda." Tinti does not focuses solely on the human element: playing equal roles are giraffes Doe, Francesco, and especially Lulu, who learns to astral project herself and visits the zookeeper's dreams.

Tinti has a taste for bittersweet whimsy, which often results in stories marked by a wide-eyed magical realism. In "Preservation," Mary, the daughter of a well-known artist, works late afternoons and evenings restoring murals in a museum diorama. But when the museum gallery empties of visitors, a stuffed bear in the middle of the room seems to come to life. Tinti wisely underplays the effect, letting it complement and ultimately represent Mary's gradual realization of her father's mortality.

An entire collection of such concept-heavy stories risks repetition or inconsequentiality, but fortunately ANIMAL CRACKERS isn't intended as a stunt and Tinti doesn't make animals the center of every piece. In several stories, they play merely a tangential or sometimes abstract role. In "Hit Man of the Year," for example, a bison on a buffalo nickel symbolizes love and extinction for an Italian mob hitman. Dark and affecting, "Bloodworks" barely mentions a neighbor's cat until the last few pages when the story, about the parents of an increasingly menacing child, has grown bleakly unresolvable and nightmarishly hopeless. That this story can exist so closely and naturally with lighter fare like "Gallus gallus" --- which features, among other oddball characters, a man who never learned to tie his shoes --- reveals Tinti's considerable range of tone and emotion.

Not everything in ANIMAL CRACKERS works quite so well, however. Tinti's style is streamlined and focused, and every element is perfectly calibrated to exact a particular emotion from the reader or to reinforce a specific theme in the material. Such control is impressive, but too often, as in "Hit Man of the Year" and "Gallus gallus," it chokes the stories of spontaneity and creates the sense that the characters do not extend beyond the boundaries of the first and last sentences.

Tinti's conceptual derring-do occasionally outstrips her practical abilities, but ANIMAL CRACKERS remains an impressive and engaging debut from an author who has no fear of sticking her neck out.

--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

The reader who comes to Tinti's tales expecting a tame petting zoo will, with swiftly mounting unease, realize that he has instead entered a darkly dangerous den. Each story in this collection is tightly coiled and poised to strike. The animals are endowed with preternatural intelligence and will. More disturbingly, the human characters evince a vicious predatory streak and an incalculability of action and reaction. By upending our perceptions of man and beast, Tinti keeps us deliciously off-balance. Her unflinching descriptions and trenchant insights combine to make Animal Crackers a riveting and haunting read.

I read every page of this magical book with the excitement of discovering something new about myself and the world we share. Tinti's insight into the soul of every character, and the way she magically imbues animals with a prescient lens into the human condition, will touch you in a way like no other collection of short stories I've ever read has done before. Realizing this is her first book, I can't wait to see what else springs from the imagination of this new talent! Whatever it is, Tinti's books, current and future, like her storied animal companions, will roar!

Tinti uses animals in a clever way to reveal something fundamentally human about all of the characters that inhabit the magical and beautiful stories in her collection. The stories evoke an emotional response deeply disturbing because they arise from events created by well developed characters that have a piece of us in them. My recommendation is to read the stories and then hold up a mirror -- Tinti will grab you in her web of literary precision.

Hannah Tinti has written an array of entertaining dark stories. She is very talented and obviously has the gift of a very imaginative mind. For the reader that is looking for something dark and well written, this is a perfect choice for summer reading. It might as well be good for xmas, reading Animal Crackers might just make the reader a gentler, smarter person.

Finally I found a new voice in short story writing that reminds us how good the form can be. The stories are original, funny and touch on aspects of our rawest emotions. First Raymond Carver, then Thom Jones, and now Hannah Tinti has resurrected the short story.

"Animal Crackers" is a collection of short stories written by Hannah Tinti, author of "The Good Thief". This collection has 11 tales.

I read this book for one reason, The Good Thief: A Novel is a great book. "Animal Crackers" was Tinti's debut book and I wanted to be able to say I've read all her work.

This collection won't knock you off your feet, but it does have it's gems:

Preservation - Mary the daughter of a well-known artist, is restoring dioramas in a natural history museum & is haunted by a stuffed black bear that seems to come to life

Slim's Last Ride - a child plays chilling games with his pet rabbit

Hit Man of the Year - Ambruzzo Spagnetti is the best, but nothing is forever

Gallus, Gallus - Mr. Perkin a pompous candy store owner & husband projects his anger at his wife onto her prized rooster Romeo

Bloodworks - a father with his own history of cruelty to animals discovers a dead kitten in his son's closet and worries that there is possible something in the family blood

A good, mild collection of short stories, if you want to be really impressed by Hannah Tinti, read her novel "A Good Thief"!

Enjoy~

In her collection of short stories titled Animal Crackers, Hannah Tinti deftly juxtaposes the innate qualities of the animal world with those of humanity. Like Arthur Bradford's collection Dogwalker, Tinti presents a selection of dark and forlorn stories musing upon the question of what it means to be an animal, or rather if humans are actually civilized enough to be called animals.

Unlike most of the animals in her stories, there seems to be something just not right about the human species. She skilfully hints around the prevalence of sociopathic behavior in her human characters, suggesting it may be more innate, and thus common, whether exhibited in unattended little boys or refined hitmen, than we would like to admit. We're more interested in self-absorption than the self-preservation exhibited by her non-human characters.

It's a curious contrast. Her non-human characters, including easily bored pet snakes, wild red jungle chickens of Southeast Asia, mobilized and striking zoo giraffes, Slim the ragdoll white rabbit, and stuffed museum bears exhibit just as much, if not more, personality and civility we would normally expect from ourselves.

Amazing! I don't like short stories but this collection spoke to me. Hannah Tinti is an amazing writer! She uses the animals in such a way that we see the human emotions below the surface and react to our own feelings that they evoke. Can't wait for her next book!!

I'm not a big fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed Hannah Tinti's debut work. Each story involves animals, sometimes as main characters, sometimes just barely. Each story does delve into the darker side of human nature. I usually race through books eager to find out what happens next. This book invites you to savor each story and really think about what is going on. All the stories don't end with pat endings. They leave you a bit hanging with just hints of what happens next. I really enjoyed her writing style.

Some stories hit everything right, like Animal Crackers. The story and characters are both memorable. Some stories like Preservation have very interesting characters but the story wasn't so keen. Each story did have something going for it-unique quirky characters or the manner of Ms. Tinti telling the story.

The book back states the book to be "strange, funny, and unnerving." I originally took that to mean humorous. After reading the book, I know that they mean funny as weird or strange. I liked least the stories that left one wondering if the character was going crazy- the woman who kept seeing her cadaver or the woman who thought the stuffed bear was tracking her. I know it was symbolic, but I thought it could have been better expressed.

All in all, a highly enjoyable read. Maybe I'll give more short stories a try!!