Animal Bodies
On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties
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Animal Bodies
Narrated by:
Julia Whelan
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Narrated by:
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Julia Whelan
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By:
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Suzanne Roberts
About this listen
How do we reckon with our losses? In Animal Bodies Suzanne Roberts explores the link between death and desire and what it means to accept our own animal natures, the parts we most often hide, deny, or consider only with shame-our taboo desires and our grief. In landscapes as diverse as the Salamanca's cobbled streets, the Mekong River's floating markets, Fire Island's windswept beaches, Nashville's honky-tonks, and the Sierra Nevada's snowy slopes, Roberts interrogates her memory and tries to make sense of her own private losses (deaths of people and relationships), as well as more public losses, including a mass shooting in her hometown, environmental devastation in the Amazon rainforest, and wildfire evacuations.
©2025 Audiobrary (P)2025 AudiobraryCritic reviews
“Suzanne Roberts’ essays are eloquent and vibrantly imaginative. They are lyrical in the best sense: the language is rhythmic, pulsing on the page, but they are never poeticized, flowery or vague. Roberts’ wisdom and humor are evident throughout. I so welcome a collection of her essays, all in one place."
Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard Is True and In the Lateness of the World
Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard Is True and In the Lateness of the World
“I have been thinking about one particular Suzanne Roberts essay, “Breaking the Codes,” since I first read it. Sometimes, I open a closet door and my stomach drops, remembering one painful scene in her essay. Sometimes I see a group of teenagers and I wonder, and worry, about all of them. Roberts’ writing rearranges me in some fundamental and necessary ways. A book like this, a book by her, is a book I desperately need.”
Camille T Dungy, Author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers and Editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Poetry
Camille T Dungy, Author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers and Editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Poetry
"Animal Bodies is a marvel, a heartbreaking road map of living, loving, and grieving. Roberts bravely recalls the deaths of her alcoholic father, her dear friend, and her mother, a complex force in her life. Here, we read about rape, escape, affairs, and repair. There is wilderness and then, somehow, the clearing--both in her world travels and the dying around her. Thinking about death clarifies life, and Roberts knows the thin line between grief and joy, the importance of living fully and fighting for freedom without apology. This is hard-earned wisdom and liberation. I can't stop thinking about it."
Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower and Gardening Secrets of the Dead
Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower and Gardening Secrets of the Dead
“No one travels the depths of place and experience more phenomenally than Suzanne Roberts. In these essays that explore being, beauty, desire, death, and our collective animal journeys on the planet, Animal Bodies gathers our questions about life and brings them to the only place where meaning might emerge: adaptation. This book is a triumph that transcends human and gives us a chance to re-story ourselves into the larger world.”
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water
"In Animal Bodies, Suzanne Roberts offers surprising insight, both intimate and universal, into death, desire, and how we all move through this difficult world. Her essays are ruthless, beautiful, graceful, and endlessly fascinating. A wonderful book."
Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire
Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire