Her Body Among Animals
Paola Ferrante

‘Precise yet poetic, sharply observed yet compassionate and tender, these cautionary tales for future generations burst the bounds of genre and take us into new and exciting literary realms.’
– David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother

‘Paola Ferrante’s writing is so daring, so sharp and visceral, and yet so effortless. Gorgeous, wry, and unsettling, Her Body Among Animals pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until the final page.’
– Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove

‘Paola Ferrante’s monster-haunted stories are as dark as a moonless lake—and as beautiful.’
– André Forget, author of In the City of Pigs

In this genre-bending debut collection merging horror, fairy tales, pop culture, and science-fiction, women challenge the boundaries placed on their bodies while living in a world ‘among animals’, where violence is intertwined with bizarre ecological disruptions.

A sentient sex robot goes against her programming; a grad student living with depression is weighed down by an ever-present albatross; an unhappy wife turns into a spider; a boy with a dark secret is haunted by dolls; a girl fights to save her sister from growing a mermaid tail like their absent mother.

Magical yet human, haunted and haunting, these stories act as a surreal documentation of the mistakes in systems of the past that remain very much in the present. Ferrante investigates toxic masculinity and the devastation it enacts upon women and our planet, delving into the universal undercurrent of ecological anxiety in the face of such toxicity, and the personal experience of being a new mother concerned about the future her child will face.

Through these confrontations of the complexity of living in a woman’s body, Her Body Among Animals moves us from hopelessness to a future of resilience and possibility.

Praise for Her Body Among Animals

‘This collection dives deep beneath the surfaces of water bodies and pits in the sand, beyond reflections in the mirror, spectral traces on the glass, flashes of light from the cosmos, and between the unintelligible spaces that separate individual minds, bodies, and species from one another in shared and vulnerable ecosystems and domestic spheres. The characters are alive between worlds, seeking to make sense of the unreality of reality and the reality of unreality. Strangeness and beauty abound amid violence and disorientation. The constellations shimmer and speak. Language slips so meanings are rarely clear but the slips are often darkly funny and eerily sublime. These stories are a testament to a mind that travels far and a voice that speaks an urgent language.’
—Angélique Lalonde, Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings

‘The vibrant stories in Paola Ferrante’s collection Her Body Among Animals transport the reader to strange, yet achingly familiar territory. Ferrante holds up a funhouse mirror to our contemporary moment with her sharp and dazzling prose. At the heart of these stories is the emotional truth of what it means to be human, told from unexpected perspectives: a sentient robot, a wife-turned-spider, and Mother Units. These wondrous narratives showcase the infinite scope of the universe and the ways in which we struggle to survive.’
—Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?

‘There is no filler here; each story is devastating, brilliantly imaginative, and almost impossible to summarize neatly. Ferrante is a vital new voice in short fiction.’
—Publishers Weekly

‘Elegant and arresting, the eleven modern fables in Paola Ferrante’s Her Body Among Animals thrum with a desperate, racing pulse as they capture the everyday horrors women live with and the sacrifices—of personhood, opportunity, and safety—their ordinary lives require.’
— Foreword Reviews

‘Her Body Among Animals feels particularly urgent given the headlines that have dominated newsfeeds this year. The world is burning, and Ferrante has generously given us a way to look at that grim reality, to grapple with our feelings of terror and loss, and to process what it means to live through unrelenting catastrophe.’
—Quill & Quire

‘A tour de force of storytelling, a powerful, challenging, rewarding experience.’
— Toronto Star

About the Author

Paola Ferrante is a writer living with depression. Her debut fiction collection has been shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award, and named a finalist in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards. Her debut poetry collection was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She won Grain Magazine’s Short Grain Contest for Poetry, The New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award, Room Magazine’s Fiction Contest, and was longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize. Her work appears in After Realism: 24 Stories for the 21st Century (2022), Best Canadian Poetry 2021 (2021), North American Review, PRISM International, and elsewhere. She was born, and still resides in, Toronto, Canada, with her partner Mat and their son.

Paperback ISBN: 9781914391422

Ebook ISBN: 9781914391439

Publication date: August 2024

Formats: Paperback / eBook