Kick the Animal Out

by Véronique Ovaldé
translated by Adriana Hunter

My name is Rose like my mother.

Not Rose b, not Rose II, or Rosebud, Rosalie, Rosette, Rosa Niña, Seven Sisters Rose, or Rosa Gallica. No, I’m just called Rose, like her.

Kick the Animal Out

When Rose, Rose’s mum, disappears, her fifteen-year-old daughter tries to reconstruct her parents’ past. The story Rose comes with is as improbable as her father’s ridiculous explanation but is so much better. It matters not that “it doesn’t hang together” — it certainly worked for me.

A strange and poetic novel, lovingly translated by Adriana Hunter. (I hope it is as good or better in French: to me, Déloger l’animal sounds better than Kick the Animal Out.) It is very sad and at times very funny.

Mr Loyal wore suspenders. I always thought: his shoulders are holding his pants up, and it fascinated me, this solidarity between different organs — the deficient waist supported by the fat carcass. Then we ran to catch the bus — me skipping along and the circus manager making the surface of the globe shudder.