Bad Animals

National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 awardee Braunstein (The Sweet Relief of Missing Children) has written a bookish book, with its small-town Maine library setting and a librarian embroiled in a scandal that turns obsessive, weird, and utterly unpredictable. Readers interested in complex heroines will find Maeve Cosgrove’s response, after a teenager makes allegations against her, to be edgy, elusive, vulnerable, and compellingly real, especially as she reckons with her own values, identity, and agency. When a celebrated author intervenes, seemingly at first on Maeve’s behalf, to salvage her reputation and her library job, the narrative ventures into a bleak archive of conspiracies, sure to prompt intense book club conversations. The novel touches on sex, morality, and literature in ways that draw attention to bigger questions of politics, all without ever losing sight of the plot and the woman at its center.