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From the award-winning author of The Wonder Garden comes a set of linked stories spotlighting human-animal relations—and revealing the tensions that threaten to fracture a suburban New England communityTensions simmer in small-town Connecticut. A city transplant is haunted by the deer carcass hanging in her neighbor’s garage. A psychiatric patient believes she’s becoming a bird. A disgraced oil executive invites his granddaughter’s kindergarten class to tour his home menagerie—what could go wrong? Rumors spread and fires burn in this second short story collection from award-winning author Lauren Acampora.
As in Acampora’s debut
The Wonder Garden, The Animal Room delves deep into the town of Old Cranbury and its eclectic mix of residents. Incisive and moving, these stories chart the interconnected lives of neighbors, relatives, coworkers, enemies, lovers, and the animals around them, turning an unflinching eye to the natural world to shed light on human nature. Through its riveting ensemble,
The Animal Room paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of contemporary American life that is strikingly unique.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Lauren Acampora is the author of
The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp, and
The Hundred Waters. Her work has won or been nominated for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Story Prize, and the New England Book Award, and she’s been named an Artist Fellow in Fiction by The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the
Paris Review, One Story, New England Review, Missouri Review, Guernica, and the
New York Times. The story "Dominion," from
The Animal Room, has been anthologized in
The Best American Short Stories 2025.