ABSTRACT
The opening lines of Justin Torres's novel We the Animals stunned me as he captured the passionate and tumultuous relationships of three brothers:
We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in feud for more.
(Torres 2011: 1)