#rough animals

Some westerns on my summer tbr

From memoirs to graphic novels, short stories, and autofiction, our staff and contributors recommend 16 books to read this June.

“There is an unmarked line in Utah, somewhere among the flatworm lengths of invisible county borders, past the point when you can say you’re headed South and are now already in it and just going further down, where the plain opens forward and the plateaus are too high on either side for you to see the sun and so the sun seems to come from the ground itself. He watched the earth shed its green skin and dry into tan bruises of acacia bramble and sand– the top fingers of the desert, spread upon the map from below like a callus on the earth.” –Rae Delbianco, Rough Animals 🍂 I don’t know where to begin. I honestly don’t know how to begin to summarize my love for this book and my admiration and respect for its author. Rough Animals is an open wound of a novel. Bleeding you dry and dragging you across the desert, desperate. Rae’s sometimes achingly lyrical and sometimes bare-bones writing style weaves it’s way seamlessly throughout in a way that echos a cold reality at the same time as it leaves you with the aftertaste of a fever dream. I loved every bit of it; the imagery, the characters, the brutal human struggle of grappling with who you are when everything you’ve hinged your identity and your soul to is vanishing in a cloud of dust and exhaust behind you. This book is a force of nature, and an instant classic. I can’t wait to have a whole collection of Rae Delbianco novels sitting on my shelf in the future (or, more realistically, in a loving pile on my floor.)