The Animal Girl

September 1, 2007
These short stories and novellas are crystallized fiction that manage to tell complete tales in a few pages. Mostly they concern the tentative and imperfect way people try to connect romantically, with flawed and damaged individuals trying to find love. In "Hunters," Kate is dying but answers a personal ad for a fling at romance, getting a response from a hesitant hunter from whom she keeps her illness a secret. In the title story, difficult Leah gets a summer job in a university biomedical lab where animals are experimented on and killed and buries the hurt of her widower father's new romance in a hopeless, stalkerlike crush on her boss. The final story, "The Sleeping Woman," examines another improbable romance between a fortysomething woman and the husband of a comatose woman who has been unresponsive for three years. Evelyn dares Russell to take chances in life and with her, but he resists and cannot let go of the life and the family he once cherished. Fulton does a careful, detailed job in limning the frustrating emotional life of his characters. Recommended.Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2007
Award-winningFultons newest collection of stories explores love in times of death when it is, perhaps, most potent of all. After the cancer she thought was cured returns, Kate, a middle-aged divorc'e, turns to the classifieds, hoping for one last chance to connect with someone as her daughter grows ever more distant. In the wake of her mothers death, Leah takes on a ghoulish job delivering research animals to their certain ends, and copes with the trauma of both experiences by lashing out at her fathers new girlfriend and at her scientist boss. Martin and Nina watch the demise of their relationship during a vacation in Italy even as Ninas body swells with new life. And in Fultons testament to the redeeming power of love, Evelyn meets Russell, whose wife has been in a coma for years following a horrific car accident. Together, the two learn to love and trust again even in the midst of tragedy. In their exploration of loss, Fultons moving vignettes offerglimpses into all that is painful and hopeful and human.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)