Loving, Faithful Animal

'An unflinching look at the ways we fail the people we love, at the cruelty of family, its toxicity, and beauty ... A deep, multi-faceted portrait of the inheritance of damage' -Stephanie Danler, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetbitter New Year's Eve, 1990, small-town Australia. The mysterious death of the family dog pushes Jack, a former conscript tormented by the horrors of Vietnam, into one of his periodic drug-fuelled vanishing acts.

His eccentric brother Les remains next door, a gentle fixer-upper missing both trigger fingers, whose loyalties are increasingly torn between Jack and his wife Evelyn. This time, Evelyn lets Jack stay gone. She is rapidly disappearing herself, lost in recollections of a vibrant youth as her eldest daughter Lani seems intent on misspending her own.

And at the heart of it all is Lani's little sister Ru, who sees everything and yet is overlooked in the chaos of her family crisis. A Loving, Faithful Animal is a searing portrait of people on the brink, excavating an Australia rarely seen in literature. An unforgettable interrogation of ruins, redemption, and reasons why, this is a haunting coming-of-age from one of Australia's most extraordinary young writers.