| 2008 Story Prize Notable Book
The five heartbreaking and radiant stories in John Fulton's
The Animal Girl explore the awkwardness of situations
in which grief and erotic love collide. Here are people in
extremis, struggling mightily, and often failing, to keep
it together. In the Pushcart Prize–winning "Hunters," Fulton
contrasts the humorous clumsiness of dating with the grim
realities of death in the tale of a middle-aged woman who
keeps her cancer a secret when she starts a relationship with
an avid hunter. In the novella-length title story, a lonely
adolescent girl deals with the recent loss of her mother and
the alien presence of her father's new girlfriend by taking
out her aggression on her boss and on the animals she cares
for in her summer job at a research laboratory. The final
story in the collection, "The Sleeping Woman," delves into
the inner life of Evelyn, a divorced professional woman who
falls in love with Russell, a man whose wife is permanently
brain damaged and has been unresponsive for years. The ghostly
presence of Russell's wife haunts Evelyn as she discovers
how her lover has been scarred by his misfortune and searches
for ways they might build a long-term relationship in the
wake of personal tragedy.
These powerful stories approach the often sentimentalized
subject of romance with tenderness and insight into the heart-worn
perspective of characters who have failed at love in the past.
In lucid, revelatory prose, Fulton navigates the complexity
of both mid-life courtship and adolescent rage with humor
and intelligence.
“In their exploration of loss, Fulton’s moving vignettes
offer glimpses into all that is painful and hopeful and human.”—Booklist
"Fulton's stories are reminiscent of the work of the
late Andre Dubus." —News & Observer
"Fulton can evoke a full range of emotion without burdening
each of his sentences with it, in the same way that his characters
live meaningful lives even if each moment isn't crushed with
significance." —Curled
Up With A Good Book (link goes to
full review)
John Fulton is the author of two other books of fiction:
Retribution, winner of the Southern Review Short
Fiction Award, and the novel More Than Enough, a Barnes
and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. His short
fiction has appeared in the Southern Review, Zoetrope,
and the Ontario Review, among other publications, and
he has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, short-listed for the
O. Henry Award, and cited for distinction in The Best American
Short Stories. He lives with his wife and baby daughter
in Boston, where he teaches in the MFA program at the University
of Massachusetts-Boston. | 
