I Animal

Description

Where the past claws back, and the animal within refuses to be caged.

I Animal introduces readers to Tommy, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter who flees Los Angeles to return to Buffalo when his mother’s health declines. What begins as a reluctant homecoming quickly unravels into a raw, restless journey through family ties, old neighborhoods, and the gnawing realization that the instincts we bury never really die.

With a voice that is biting, self-deprecating, and brutally honest, Kevin Del Principe explores the collision of memory and mortality, identity and instinct. Tommy navigates old friends and enemies, dysfunctional relatives, and a city that never really let him go, all while wrestling with the growing animal urge inside him—part metaphor, part transformation, wholly unsettling.

Del Principe’s prose mixes gallows humour with searing vulnerability, offering a narrative that is as absurd as it is deeply human. The result is a portrait of a man on the edge—of love, of loss, of self—trying to decide whether to fight his own nature or embrace it.

Highlights include:

• A flawed, painfully honest protagonist whose voice is both hilarious and heartbreaking.
• Sharp depictions of Buffalo life, from dive bars to family kitchens.
• A surreal, animalistic undercurrent that pushes the novel into myth and metaphor.
• Themes of grief, family loyalty, masculinity, and the feral instincts that define us.

Unapologetic and unforgettable, I Animal is a novel that gnaws at the edges of identity, daring readers to confront the wildness that lurks beneath the surface of us all.

Written by Kevin Del Principe