THE HEAVEN OF ANIMALS: STORIES

David James Poissant is one of our finest young writers, with a taut and subtle prose style, a deep knowledge of craft, and a heart so vast it encompasses whole worlds. I read his fiction and became a lifelong fan; I promise that you will too.

There is much to admire in David James Poissant's excellent debut story collection. His men and women are never mere caricatures.They are flawed but fully human and their stories are compelling and true to life's complexities. There is a refreshing lack of glibness in his work; he is a serious writer and these are serious stories.

France: Albin Michel Spanish/LA: Edhasa Argentina Italian: Enne Enne

Wow. David James Poissant has written a fantastic, beguiling book. Often offbeat and always enthralling, THE HEAVEN OF ANIMALS seduces the reader, again and again, with our weird, urgent attempts to understand each other. These stories lure the loners and romantics out of America’s backwaters, then march them into the moonlight to break your heart.

The much-anthologized Poissant justifies his status as a favorite of the literary quarterlies with this debut collection of unsparing yet warmly empathetic stories...Rueful and kind, akin to both Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver in humane spirit and technical mastery.

David James Poissant will end up being his generation's Richard Ford: his fiction is full of big ideas, of startling insights into how we live now; and his writing is so smart, so sensitive and self-deprecating and full of empathy. He is one of our very best young writers.

Like Calhoun, Poissant is a young writer on the move, having had his work published in places like the Atlantic, Glimmer Train, and New Stories from the South and won numerous awards (e.g., the Matt Clark Prize). This first collection investigates relationships on the edge, with stories ranging from two men rushing to save an alligator to a young woman helping her anxious boyfriend to a man thinking about his brother encountering a wolf in the moonlight. Read more...

Interview with DAvid James Poissant Read more...

It's not often you read stories with this much range, precision, power, and emotional depth in a first collection. It's not like a "first collection" at all, in fact. This is beautiful, exciting, accomplished work. David James Poissant is one of the best-of-the-best new writers out there, and I have no doubt there's a lot more to come.

Wild as two men wrestling an alligator, tender as a father stretching out on the floor next to his sleeping son, the stories in THE HEAVEN OF ANIMALS will make you stop and wonder. David James Poissant digs deep until he reaches the heart of each tale, unearthing unexpected connections with his vivid and graceful prose. These men and women, parents and children, all stand at the precipice of loss, and in their final moments, reach out for each other.

David James Poissant’s ‘Lizard Man’ delivers all you could want from a story: searing tensions, the irresistible strangeness of the Floridian landscape, incandescent prose, and characters alight with wisdom and pain, with hope and violence and regret. Throw in an alligator in a kiddie pool and, dear reader, you’ve got one hell of a story. Poissant is an extraordinary talent, and ‘Lizard Man’ is nothing short of unforgettable.

For every sentence I was translating, every word I was looking for, I had the impression that he had not only thought, but "felt" the words, and had the same feelings of his characters.

Entertaining . . . . Standouts include Lizard Man and the pitch-perfect Last of the Great Land Mammals. Read more...

Poissant is a first-rate storyteller who has an appreciation for the absurd turns of events that press down into all we try to keep buried until we have no choice but to face the people we are when we’re alone in the dark. By turns, funny and heartbreaking, Lizard Man has teeth and enough bite to grab onto you and not let go.

An extraordinary debut from Florida author David James Poissant--a Venn diagram of the miraculous and the absurd. Like Flannery O'Connor, Poissant's stories are marked by violence, humor, and grace; like Carver and Diaz, Poissant writes scenes soaked in kerosene and seconds from combustion. In these pages you'll find charming reprobates and self-deluded hustlers, young lovers, alligators and dead dogs, fathers and sons, nudists who know that "cold is a state of mind," star-nosed moles that exhume the glow of a buried baby, all the warped love of family, the batshit hilarity of the South, and the ‘geometry’ of loss.

An engaging, well-crafted collection . . . . Poissant’s deft control of narrative structure allows for multiple centers of tension: past regret versus present resolve, or inward doubt versus apparent braggadocio . . . . The author’s deep caring for his characters surfaces in his compassionate attempts to unpack the perplexities of the human condition. Poissant’s thoroughly realist style and tight storytelling will appeal to fans of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and George Saunders.

A character in “Lizard Man” has tattoos that, if you look closely, secretly hold another image in the design. David James Poissant’s writing has that same effect, the initial and wonderful strangeness giving way, slowly but surely, to something deeper, something difficult, something beautiful. Poissant is a writer who knows us with such clarity that we wonder how he found his way so easily into our hearts and souls.