A Real Animal

Name: A Real Animal
Brand: Catapult
SKU: 9781646222964
Price: 34.80 USD
Availability: InStock

$34.80

Product Variants

Review Quotes:
One of CULTURED's 2026 Young Writers
Debutiful, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Literary Hub, A Summer Must-Read
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Time, Our Culture, PureWow, Debutiful, & Literary Hub

"Emeline Atwood's debut novel stirs with edgy sex, anger, and transcendence." --Hamilton Cain, Time

"Stunning . . . A Real Animal depicts violence and trauma in a refreshing, often surprising way--a captivating, remarkable debut." --Sam Franzini, Our Culture

"This book knocked my socks off with an unreliable (but weirdly relatable) narrator who keeps making bad decisions, but you root for nonetheless." --Jillian Quint, PureWow

"A powerhouse. Atwood's book is simply one of the best books I've read since I started covering books. She perfectly writes the turbulent time when one finishes college and enters 'adulthood'--whatever that means." --Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful

"This is a book that is a caliber above and beyond what we have come to expect from the young-twenties-girl-bildungsroman. There's men, yes, and sex, a lot of it, and yearning to be understood, and for power and a place in the world, but A Real Animal is about the wild, deep, feral core of those themes . . . The book has this feeling about it, like there's so much within the pages that's just bursting to get out: a violent and powerful urge for something, for more survival, for more agency, to express one's pain, to feel better. A Real Animal is as raw and visceral as an open-mouthed scream: you hear it in your bones. You can see its teeth." --Julia Hass, Literary Hub

"[A] propulsive and stunning debut . . . Readers will be held captive by Lucy's exciting voice." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Atwood's debut is a refreshing take on what it means to come of age in a world that feels both unpredictable and stagnant." -- Library Journal (starred review)

"Emeline Atwood's Lucy is a marvelous, maddening, monstrous creation and A Real Animal is an irresistible whirlpool of a novel." --Joy Williams

"Emeline Atwood's A Real Animal is a strange and astonishing and entirely original book, full of darkness shot through with light, wild and tender. Atwood writes brilliantly about our interior, personal wildernesses, the snarling, wounded animal at the heart of any person. Lucy is an unforgettable narrator: compelling, terrifying, lovable, surprising, human. She, and this book, are extraordinary." --Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book

"The gorgeous writing in A Real Animal makes its protagonist's risky behavior all the more harrowing--Lucy's intelligence does not necessarily protect her. I feared for the young woman with the extravagant sense of what intimacy looks like, creating near-constant suspense in this powerful debut." --Amy Hempel

"In a moment when we often find ourselves numb and distracted, Emeline Atwood has given us an enlivening and powerful novel about what it means to dwell and be changed. It gets under your skin. Atwood is an ambitious writer, as at home in the colloquial as she is in the lyrical. A tremendous accomplishment." --Stephanie Wambugu, author of Lonely Crowds

" A Real Animal is an absolute marvel--at once dark and luminous, raw and poignant, feral in its originality and brilliant in its delivery. Emeline Atwood is a breathtaking writer, and her first novel is a lithe, muscular, and beautifully dangerous tour de force." --Bret Anthony Johnston, author of We Burn Daylight

Biographical Note:
EMELINE ATWOOD graduated from the Michener Center for Writers in 2023. She writes fiction and poetry and is a recipient of the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize, the Begley Fiction Prize, the Hatch Poetry Prize, and the Le Baron Russell Briggs Fiction Prize. She lives in Austin.

Publisher Marketing:
In this unforgettable debut, a moment of metaphysical transformation launches a woman's beautiful and terrifying journey through her twenties, through loneliness and complicated love that takes her from the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the plains of Texas

A Real Animal follows Lucy through the decade dividing college and real adulthood, as she navigates three distinct romantic relationships, reckons with the false promise of family intimacy, and seeks connection with the sublime and natural worlds. Lucy wants her life to be extraordinary. But this desire never seems to graft easily onto the smallness of her world. As a senior in college struggling to quell the destructive effects of a sexual assault, she gets a glimpse of a different plane of existence--more wild, physical, animal. She moves away from home, breaks up with her long term boyfriend, stops speaking to her mother, and starts dating a complicated, violent man.

As she changes cities, friends, and partners, there is a persistent sense of wildness in Lucy and in her world that's only ever barely being controlled. The thrum of a nonhuman existential force in the back of her mind urges her to reject the ordinary, but also reminds her that she is alone in the world. She feels it in the depths of the ocean while deep sea diving, in the cold silences on phone calls with her sister and her mom, in the misunderstanding gaze of a man she thought would love her forever.

Guided by Emeline Atwood's lightspeed, suspenseful prose, we follow Lucy across states, jobs, relationships, and stages of intimacy with her family, witnessing both moments of horrific pain and quotidian happiness. The years pass by seamlessly, bringing her to the edge of her twenties and back to an altered, barren version of her childhood home, where she must finally come to terms with the fear that being human itself might mean feeling alone, and wild, and unknowable.

Review Citations:

Library Journal 04/01/2026 pg. 61 (EAN 9781646222964, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
Publishers Weekly 05/25/2026 (EAN 9781646222964, Hardcover) - *Starred Review