Items related to Kick the Animal Out
Fifteen-year-old Rose is trying to make sense of her world. Her mother - a beautiful woman with stiletto heels, bright clothes and the synthetic gleam of a blonde wig - has vanished, and Rose is convinced that she must be in danger. Unable to cope with the possibility of having been abandoned, Rose uses her vivid imagination to construct her own explanation for her mother's disappearance. Her father suspiciously carries on with his life and seems to be in no hurry to contact the police. Coupled with Rose's newfound knowledge that her father is not actually the ringleader of a circus, she begins to doubt that he is even her real father. As Rose pieces together snippets of remembered conversations and the half-truths she is fed by adults, her own story about her mother's whereabouts grows ever more romantic, and ends up being just as difficult to accept as the truth.
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About the Author:
Veronique Ovalde was born in 1972 and is the author of the novels The Sleep of Fishes, All Things Shimmering, and Generally, I Like Men Very Much. Her debut in English was Kick the Animal Out (Portobello 2008). She has two children, works in publishing, and lives and writes in Paris.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
It was not long before I thought of Mr. Loyal’s lion.
The only thing I knew for sure about Mr. Loyal’s alleged circus was that it housed a lion who lived a peaceful life behind bars and did nothing much apart from eating, dozing, and pacing around a bit to limber up its pads. The lion was old and asthmatic; it had decaying teeth and it would groan all through the night when its teeth hurt. Mr. Loyal would say, Rufus needs to see the dentist, or Rufus has heartburn–his comments always had something to do with Rufus’s health. Mr. Loyal had always said that he kept Rufus to remind him of the old days (when his circus really was a circus, presumably), because he did not have the heart to get rid of him, even though he cost a fortune to feed–as the sensible Mr. Loyal frequently pointed out to the sentimental Mr. Loyal, the two of them balancing each other out sufficiently for their dialogue to result in an anvil-like inertia.
When Mom was still living with us, the only thing she would agree to say about Mr. Loyal’s circus was that it had an old lion and that she had worked for it a long time ago. If I asked to go and see Mr. Loyal’s circus, she would say, It’s no place for you. Which was a pretty surprising comment in itself, but it also harbored a prohibition which I felt implied something monstrous. If I insisted and said, But I’m fifteen, Mom, she would tell me, You don’t look a day over half that. She would look at me kindly, softening and repeating the words, Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.
So, in my docile way, I had banned myself from thinking about it for a long time.
Which means that if a furtive thought about the circus crept into my head, I would call on all my private guardians and they would block the exits, surrounding the unhealthy thought and suffocating it by sitting on it. Thereby eradicating the evil thought.
Not going to Mr. Loyal’s circus had not bothered me.
Until Mom disappeared.
When I suspected a link between this circus and mom’s absence.
And when I thought of the lion.
The only thing I knew for sure about Mr. Loyal’s alleged circus was that it housed a lion who lived a peaceful life behind bars and did nothing much apart from eating, dozing, and pacing around a bit to limber up its pads. The lion was old and asthmatic; it had decaying teeth and it would groan all through the night when its teeth hurt. Mr. Loyal would say, Rufus needs to see the dentist, or Rufus has heartburn–his comments always had something to do with Rufus’s health. Mr. Loyal had always said that he kept Rufus to remind him of the old days (when his circus really was a circus, presumably), because he did not have the heart to get rid of him, even though he cost a fortune to feed–as the sensible Mr. Loyal frequently pointed out to the sentimental Mr. Loyal, the two of them balancing each other out sufficiently for their dialogue to result in an anvil-like inertia.
When Mom was still living with us, the only thing she would agree to say about Mr. Loyal’s circus was that it had an old lion and that she had worked for it a long time ago. If I asked to go and see Mr. Loyal’s circus, she would say, It’s no place for you. Which was a pretty surprising comment in itself, but it also harbored a prohibition which I felt implied something monstrous. If I insisted and said, But I’m fifteen, Mom, she would tell me, You don’t look a day over half that. She would look at me kindly, softening and repeating the words, Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.
So, in my docile way, I had banned myself from thinking about it for a long time.
Which means that if a furtive thought about the circus crept into my head, I would call on all my private guardians and they would block the exits, surrounding the unhealthy thought and suffocating it by sitting on it. Thereby eradicating the evil thought.
Not going to Mr. Loyal’s circus had not bothered me.
Until Mom disappeared.
When I suspected a link between this circus and mom’s absence.
And when I thought of the lion.
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- PublisherPortobello Books Ltd
- Publication date2009
- ISBN 10 1846271428
- ISBN 13 9781846271427
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages196
- Rating
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Kick The Animal Out
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Granta Books
(2009)
ISBN 10: 1846271428
ISBN 13: 9781846271427
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