A short story collection about women's transformations from girls into wives, mothers, and monsters.
'In villages where women bore most of the weight of a constricted life, witches flew by night on broomsticks,' said Italo Calvino of the way imagination bridges the gap between everyday existence and an idealised alternative.
The fifteen stories of Animal Wife are unified by girls and women who cross this threshold seeking liberation from family responsibilities, from societal expectations, from their own minds. A girl born with feathers undertakes a quest for the mother who abandoned her. An indecisive woman drinks Foresight, only to become stymied by the futures branching before her. A proofreader cultivates a cage-fighting alter ego. A woman becomes psychologically trapped in her car. A girl acts on her desire for a childhood friend as a monster draws closer to the shore. A widow invites a bear to hibernate in her den.
Animal Wife was selected as the winner of the Red Hen Fiction Award by New York Times bestselling author Ann Hood, who says of the collection, 'From the first sentence Animal Wife grabbed me and never let go. Sensual and intelligent, with gorgeous prose, it made me dizzy with its exploration and illumination of the inner and outer lives of girls and women.'
About the Author
Lara Ehrlich is the author of the short story collection Animal Wife, which was selected as the winner of the Red Hen Fiction Award by New York Times bestselling author Ann Hood, who says the book "made [her] dizzy with its exploration and illumination of the inner and outer lives of girls and women." Lara's writing appears in StoryQuarterly, Hunger Mountain, the Massachusetts Review, and the Columbia Review, among others, and has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. Lara has attended the Bread Loaf and Tin House writers' conferences, and she received a 2019 Parent-Writer Fellowship from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.
She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Boston University, and she lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and daughter.
Industry Reviews
From the first sentence Animal Wife grabbed me and never let go. Sensual and intelligent, with gorgeous prose, it made me dizzy with its exploration and illumination of the inner and outer lives of girls and women.
Ann Hood New York Times bestselling author
"Life is, for myriad reasons, untenable for the women (and girls) who inhabit Ehrlich's stories. Whether this is because they want what the modern world cannot possibly afford them or because the world is actively disinterested in their success and happiness is a question Ehrlich explores throughout this collection... The heroines of these stories must all deal with moments of rupture, occasionally violent and spectacular, and ultimately there's no going back."
Douglas Riggs of Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT
