Animals

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She talks about how she felt so much internal pressure that she would throw up and had to go see a therapist. Laura recognises and is vulnerable to the seductiveness of white wine, MDMA and pretentious poets with curly hair. The film is preoccupied with the theme of growing up, fizzing with the teenage energy of a coming-of-age movie despite its characters edging into their 30s. But even the best benders end with a hangover, when you try to piece together at what point it all turned sour and you ended up tied to your bed with your own tights (as in the book's opening). But those scenes are usually laced with a comforting, wholesome promise that they either had an epic night, or will have a deliciously grubby day together.

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The film premiered at Sundance and we have been blown away by the response – from reviewers, festivals and women who have seen it and said they could relate to it so much. It’s like someone took my early 20s and put them on crack and ecstasy and then flipped it all around til all I want to do is vomit. The book was later optioned by BAFTA-nominated producer Sarah Brocklehurst and awarded BFI funding with Unsworth tasked with writing the screenplay. At a basic level 'Animals' is a book about soulmates, albeit very, very damaged and destructive ones. Laura is starting to get pressure from Jim to tone things down a little though, and the stress of living in two worlds is starting to wear on her.

My only disappointment was the flow of the narrative which I felt got lost along the way, almost to the point of being rush towards an ending. What it’s like is being along for the ride as the one sober person while people you kinda don’t like get wasted on a mixture of drugs and booze. Set in Manchester, the novel follows best friends Laura and Tyler, codependent alcoholics whose lifestyle comes under scrutiny after Laura becomes engaged to Jim, a pianist and a teetotaler. Elsewhere, Unsworth’s blend of smart prose and comic observation leads to such memorable images as ‘a discarded Peperami sheath like an anteater’s condom’.

Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth – Canongate Books Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth – Canongate Books

Friendships are often the most complex relationships of our life, and yet aren’t given the same milestones and social kudos as romantic or sexual relationships.If we are to give friendship its due as being equal to romantic or sexual love, we have to say it can be as heartbreaking, too. Never cloying or mawkish, it communicates vulnerability, dependence and tenderness, often in a single dazzling line. What I haven’t yet done, and what isn’t part of our culture, is to sit down like ex-lovers and agree that we have changed as people and things need to end. This is an empty space, a void, or the closest you could get to a void, to pour thoughts into and watch them hang together and then dissolve. The film, directed by Australian director Sophie Hyde, starring Holliday Grainger and filmed in Dublin, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019.

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The sort of book I will never read the negative reviews of, because I know they will drive me into a frenzy of anger. When I wrote that piece, so many friends and family members I have not spoken to in years came forward and said that they were going through exactly the same when they had their child and felt ashamed. Variety’s Guy Lodge hailed the comedy as a commercial leap forward and wrote of its "ideally matched stars" and said that it compared favourably with the "more superficially subversive female leads of comedies like Trainwreck". She asks questions about the value of marriage and settling down (“My feminism is about blazing a way through old traditions,” she barks, defending her engagement to Jim). Don't get me wrong, I usually love it when authors describe 20/30 somethings monging out in dirty flats, hungover and eating grated cheese with a spoon.

Tyler is The Night’s greatest advocate, and much of the novel follows the women’s hazy adventures through Manchester after dark. Laura and Tyler are two women immersed in a mutually-assured-destructive and highly co-dependent relationship with each other fuelled by a zealous love for alcohol, hard drugs and late-night raucous adventures. As their wedding draws closer Tyler begins to grow increasingly upset by Laura's marriage and Laura begins to feel torn between the two.