Other Peoples Pets, R.L. Maizes
Other Peoples Pets, R.L. Maizes
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Other People's Pets
A Novel

Author: R.L. Maizes

Narrator: Devon Sorvari

Unabridged: 8 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/14/2020


Synopsis

"Maizes's debut novel is brought to life by Devon Sorvari's engaging narration. Her delivery is well matched to the story's short declarative sentences as she makes listeners care about La La in spite of her bad choices." -- AudioFile Magazine

R.L. Maizes's Other People’s Pets examines the gap between the families we’re born into and those we create, and the danger that holding on to a troubled past may rob us of the future.

La La Fine relates to animals better than she does to other people. Abandoned by a mother who never wanted a family, raised by a locksmith-turned-thief father, La La looks to pets when it feels like the rest of the world conspires against her.

La La’s world stops being whole when her mother, who never wanted a child, abandons her twice. First, when La La falls through thin ice on a skating trip, and again when the accusations of “unfit mother” feel too close to true. Left alone with her father—a locksmith by trade, and a thief in reality—La La is denied a regular life. She becomes her father’s accomplice, calming the watchdog while he strips families of their most precious belongings.

When her father’s luck runs out and he is arrested for burglary, everything La La has painstakingly built unravels. In her fourth year of veterinary school, she is forced to drop out, leaving school to pay for her father’s legal fees the only way she knows how—robbing homes once again.

As an animal empath, she rationalizes her theft by focusing on houses with pets whose maladies only she can sense and caring for them before leaving with the family’s valuables. The news reports a puzzled police force—searching for a thief who left behind medicine for the dog, water for the parrot, or food for the hamster.

Desperate to compensate for new and old losses, La La continues to rob homes, but it’s a strategy that ultimately will fail her.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books

"...Maizes possesses such magic. This examination of family, across all lines and definitions, will open you up in such necessary, beautiful ways."—Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here and The Family Fang

About R.L. Maizes

R.L. Maizes’s novel, OTHER PEOPLE’S PETS (Celadon Books, Macmillan), is a Colorado Book Award Winner and a Library Journal Best Debut of Summer/Fall 2020. She is the author of the short story collection WE LOVE ANDERSON COOPER (Celadon Books). Her stories have aired on National Public Radio, and can be found in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and in The Best Small Fictions 2020. Maizes’s essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O Magazine, and Literary Hub and have aired on NPR. Her humor articles have run in The New York Times and in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Maizes was born in Queens, New York, and lives in Boulder County, CO.


Reviews

Goodreads review by R.L. on April 02, 2020

It's odd to review your own book, so instead I'll just quote what Kevin Wilson, a writer I greatly admire, had to say about it: "While reading R.L. Maizes's Other People's Pets, I could not stop saying, as La La mouths to herself at one point, remarkable. Every time the novel opened up yet again to......more

Goodreads review by Kasa on July 09, 2020

With this novel, R. L. Maizes has delivered on the promise delivered in her short story collection, We Love Anderson Cooper. Advance praise from Kevin Wilson was all the impetus I needed to choose this book, and I can see why he was so drawn to it. These two young authors share the ability to create......more

Goodreads review by Jim on March 18, 2020

I was provided an ARC of Other People’s Pets by the publisher; this in no way influenced my review. Both Maizes’ writing and her storyline are masterful. I read the book in two sittings; the first half in an evening and then, when I woke up in the middle of that night, all the way through to the end......more

Goodreads review by Kami on July 15, 2020

This book was just meh for me. The concept of La La being an animal empath was really cool, and I enjoyed that aspect of the story, but that is where my list of things I liked ends. Her father drove me insane. He is so selfish. He pulled his daughter out of school (yet somehow she still goes on to g......more

Goodreads review by Susan on March 12, 2020

I loved Maizes’ book of short stories,We Love Anderson Cooper, and so have been awaiting her first novel with great anticipation. My copy of Other People’s Pets arrived Tuesday. Only the fact that I had several appointments/errands on Tuesday kept me from finishing it until Wednesday. It is the kin......more