‘Beasts and Children’: Debut novel bleak, but also beautiful

A veritable menagerie of beasts populates 'Beasts and Children,' Amy Parker's collection of linked short stories. Dogs, cats, snakes, an elephant, elephant seals, pangolins, and more punctuate incidents in the lives of three families whose stories intersect over the course of the book.

This device could feel forced, but Parker, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, invests as much in her animal characters as she does in her human protagonists. The creatures aren't simply markers or metaphors, but players in the dramas that unfold over the course of the book.

On only one occasion is Parker tempted to overplay her hand. In 'Catastrophic Molt,' a woman dying of skin cancer attacks the hide of an elephant seal with a ferocity that belies her lifelong commitment to restraint and proper manners. Chastened, she returns frequently to groom the animal. The ending might be too pat if Parker didn't have one of the characters call the veracity of the story into question.

The narrator admits: 'Maybe Carline is right. Maybe I invented this coda because the reality of Mother's death was too bleak to dwell on. There are no words for the implacable cruelty of her dissolution.'

Facing up to implacable cruelty and dreams undone by reality is the role the children play in 'Beasts and Children.' Parker calls to life children betrayed by their parents, and the effects of those betrayals are manifest long into those children's adulthoods.

As a result, 'Beasts and Children' is a fairly bleak book. But it is also a beautiful book, filled with stories that are powerful as individual pieces and abidingly heartrending when taken together. 'Beasts and Children' is an exceptional debut.

Book reading

What: Amy Parker reads from 'Beasts and Children'

Where: Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Cost: Free