by Seth Rogovoy

“My Life as an Animal” (Triquarterly Books) by Laurie Stone features a series of interconnected and comic stories that blur the lines between memoir, fiction, and cultural criticism.

Through the book’s impressionistic style, it builds a narrative via seemingly unrelated anecdotes and observations. Its tantalizing challenge to readers is that what is being read may be autobiographical but may also be fiction, or fictionalized autobiography.

The book is simply called “stories” on the cover and title page. In the end, whether it is “real” or “imagined,” it is gripping and entertaining narrative prose, and a unique window into another’s quirky consciousness.