A Real Animal

A young woman navigates her desires in the wake of a sexual assault in the propulsive and stunning debut from Atwood. When narrator Lucy is a college senior, she can’t bring herself to touch her long-term boyfriend but has many casual liaisons with other men. She also briefly transforms—perhaps literally, perhaps not—into a leopard and causes alarm by scaling a tree on campus. A year earlier, she was raped during a summer abroad. Her parents, fearing for her mental health, take her home to Boston once the school year is out, before the graduation ceremony, but she soon leaves against their will to start a job at a casting agency in Indianapolis. There, she moves on from the leopard manifestation but retains a newfound awareness of her animal nature (“I know now something about fear that’s not quite human, about predation that’s different from what others might think they know, about why cats like lying out in the sun so much”). She also becomes enmeshed with Ellis, a lover with a cuckolding kink, even after he turns violent. The novel barrels through Lucy’s 20s as she leaves and begins various jobs and relationships, and it builds toward a symbolic and surprising conclusion, in which she learns she can’t run from her past. Readers will be held captive by Lucy’s exciting voice. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (July)