Animal Spirit: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries Ser.)

By: Francesca Marciano

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Synopsis: Centered in Rome but transporting us into worlds as varied and alluring as they are emotionally real, Francesca Marciano&’s stories paint landscapes that are populated—vividly, hauntingly—by animals: from violent seagulls and starlings circling the evening sky in exhilarating formation to magical snakes and a tiny dog on the side of a deserted road. In unforgettable, cinematic frames, events unfold, especially in the lives of women. An affair ends painfully at a dinner table, an actress&’s past comes crashing down on her during an audition, an unhappy wife seeks respite in a historic palazzo sublet. Two starkly different couples imagine parenthood during a Greek island holiday and a young girl returns from rehab, deciding to set out anew with a traveling circus. A man in crisis draws his ex-lover deep into the New Mexico desert. With spellbinding clarity, the six masterly stories in Animal Spirit inhabit the minds and hearts of Marciano&’s characters. They chronicle deeply human moments of realization and recognition, indelible instants of irrevocable change—epiphanies sometimes sparked by our connection with animals and the primal power they show us.