Quiet Cruelty

To some extent, all fiction demands psycho-analysis. Whether asking us to wonder if it's mere love that results in Anna Karenina's neurasthenia or to look closely at the way Holden Caulfield idolizes his younger sister, stories pique an emotionally interpretative response. What forces the characters we read about to act one way or another, and, in turn, what do our answers to this question tell us about ourselves? John Fulton, author of The Animal Girl, is well acquainted with the life of the mind, but not in the usual sense of the phrase. His characters think and feel, sure, but the states of mind depicted in these stories always deftly translate themselves into action.

Perhaps that is just fiction at its best—"show, don't tell" and its didactic cousins—but what makes the stories in The Animal Girl unique is that they both show and tell. The line between psychology and literature here is nearly nonexistent. Characters interact with the world, with their family members and loved ones, purely based on past experience and anxieties about the future. A psychologist might read these stories and say, "Ah, yes, this all makes perfect sense." The lay reader, conversely, will probably think, "Oh, how sad," even if that judgment is accompanied by the cold tug of knowing that of course it would work out this way.

Which is not to say that everything ends badly or that there isn't love present. Rather, it's that things end realistically, but often without the cushion of hope. And the love is everywhere, but it's fleeting, racked with jealousy and fear and general human dysfunction. Fulton takes a subtly different view of relationships from many contemporary fiction writers today: for his characters, it's not love that will shine through the prevailing moments of boredom or sadness, but instead the always unfulfilled desire for love. A dying woman in "Hunters" wants one last lover, but the relationship doesn't even carry her through to death: "How odd to be heartbroken at this time in her life. How odd to be left with desire"; Evelyn never learns to suppress the jealousy she feels toward her boyfriend's comatose wife in "The Sleeping Woman"; the title story's main character has a crush on her boss, grief for her dead mother, and need for comfort from her father and not one of these emotional plotlines feels resolved by the end.

What makes these stories exceptional is the revelation that normal people are in fact not normal at all. The people living next door to most of Fulton's characters might describe their neighbors as pleasant citizens who recycle and turn down the music after ten; they certainly wouldn't be privy to the manipulation and quiet cruelty that drive the actions in these stories. No one would guess Evelyn's vehement desire to wrest her boyfriend from thoughts of his wife, even by resorting to deception, or the criminal escapades of a quiet, dumpy teenage girl. There are a few lurid exceptions to this, of course—the scene in "Real Grief," for instance, where Holly Morris locks herself in the car just after running over her grandmother. We, the neighbors and readers, hear her singing loudly through the windshield, gesturing frantically with creepy cheer. The intrigue of this story lies in the opacity of Holly's actions, "her trance—or whatever she was in." Has she gone mad, or is she just a brat? Does pscyhologizing encourage lame excuses, or should we conclude that all conclusions—whether complex or simple—are, no matter what, simplistic?

It's no accident that these stories are populated by teenagers whose confusion makes them elusive and mean and destructive. The adults show only refined versions of these traits, couching them in silent stares and unreturned phone calls, rarely acting impulsively. When they are forced to confront their adolescent children's behavior, we see the intersection of consciousness and suppression: the adults are wrapped in a gossamer of frail disguise, and it...