"In her precise writing, subtle and spellbinding, Nettel renders the ordinary unsettling, and the grotesque exquisite. In each tale Nettel creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space
wherein her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploringhow the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves within us, clandestinely, irrevocably, both unseen and overtly. These five dark
and delicately written stories unfold in fragile worlds, where animal behaviors parallel the ways in which human beings interact with one another and react to their environments. Siamese
fighting fish, cockroaches, a cat, a snake, and a strange fungus are mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature we keep hidden, buried. The traits and fates of these animals
illuminate such deeply natural, human experiences as the cruelty born of cohabitation, the desire to reproduce or the struggle against it, and the inexplicable connection that can bind, eerily,
two beings together"--
