Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"A wildly original novel that pulses with heart and truth . . . That this powerful exploration of friendship, desire, ambition, and secrets manages to be ebullient, gripping, heartbreaking, and deeply deeply funny is a testament to Kayla Rae Whitaker's formidable gifts. I was so sorry to reach the final page. Sharon and Mel will stay with me for a very long time."--Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest
ONE OF THE BEST DEBUT NOVELS OF THE YEAR-- Entertainment Weekly
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR--NPR, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage
She was the first person to see me as I had always wanted to be seen. It was enough to indebt me to her forever.
In the male-dominated field of animation, Mel Vaught and Sharon Kisses are a dynamic duo, the friction of their differences driving them: Sharon, quietly ambitious but self-doubting; Mel, brash and unapologetic, always the life of the party. Best friends and artistic partners since the first week of college, where they bonded over their working-class roots and obvious talent, they spent their twenties ensconced in a gritty Brooklyn studio. Working, drinking, laughing. Drawing: Mel, to understand her tumultuous past, and Sharon, to lose herself altogether.
Now, after a decade of striving, the two are finally celebrating the release of their first full-length feature, which transforms Mel's difficult childhood into a provocative and visually daring work of art. The toast of the indie film scene, they stand at the cusp of making it big. But with their success come doubt and destruction, cracks in their relationship threatening the delicate balance of their partnership. Sharon begins to feel expendable, suspecting that the ever-more raucous Mel is the real artist. During a trip to Sharon's home state of Kentucky, the only other partner she has ever truly known--her troubled, charismatic childhood best friend, Teddy--reenters her life, and long-buried resentments rise to the surface, hastening a reckoning no one sees coming.
A funny, heartbreaking novel of friendship, art, and trauma, The Animators is about the secrets we keep and the burdens we shed on the road to adulthood.
"Suffused with humor, tragedy and deep insights about art and friendship."-- People
"[A] stunning debut."-- Variety
"A compulsively readable portrait of women as incandescent artists and intimate collaborators."-- Elle
"In their first year of college, two young women, one from a Florida swamp, the other from a Kentucky holler, both outsiders at their prestigious east coast college, meet in "Introduction to Sketch" and become instant best friends. A decade later, Mel and Sharon's lives remain intertwined, but so much else has changed. Now a semi-famous New York filmmaking duo, they draw upon their own pasts to make intimate animated movies, a process that has left their personal lives--including their friendship--in tatters. When tragedy strikes, Mel and Sharon must return to their home states to confront long-buried secrets and try to restore damaged relationships with their families, lovers, and each other" -- Provided by publisher.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Sharon Kisses and Mel Vaught meet in an art class in college and are immediately drawn into a lifelong friendship. Both come from troubled homes and are warm and loving people hiding inside themselves. Mel is a hard-drinking, -talking, -living lesbian who appears to be absolutely fearless. Sharon is the straight, detail-oriented, introverted counterweight to Mel. For ten years, they have been getting by working on small projects-short cartoons and advertisements. When they put Mel's life onto a cartoon storyboard, create a full-length animated film, and win a Hollingsworth grant, their future seems secure. Then Sharon has a stroke at age 31. This event and Sharon's recovery give them fodder for a second film about Sharon's life. In this fine first novel, Whitaker captures the human frailties that beset everyone-jealousy, anger, insecurity, trauma, the search for love-and weaves them into a compelling story of friendship, self-destruction, and salvation. VERDICT Highly recommended for fiction readers, the LBGTQ community, those with an interest in cartooning, and anyone interested in the variability of the human condition.-Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Updating the theme of how artists turn personal pain into art, Whitaker's outstanding debut novel portrays two women working together to create adult cartoons. Mel Vaught and Sharon Kisses meet in a college art class. Confident, talented, and openly gay, Mel anticipates a career in animation, while quiet, lonely, straight, and inexperienced Sharon knows only that she wants to be an artist. Mel introduces Sharon to works by R. Crumb and other alternative animators and comics artists before the two women collaborate on their own dark, funny, carefully crafted work, discovering they perfectly complement each other. A decade after graduation, they gain recognition for Nashville Combat, a full-length animated film based on Mel's early life in central Florida as the daughter of a delinquent mother who went to prison when Mel was 13. Mel and Sharon struggle following the film's success: a drunken Mel rips out the microphone during an NPR interview; they argue; Sharon suffers an aneurism. Renewal for the pair comes with a new project, this one focused on Sharon, who returns with Mel to her eastern Kentucky home to confront her own disturbing memories and reconnect with her one childhood friend. Whitaker deftly sketches settings and characters: Brooklyn is all chain-link fences and loading docks and aging signage, Mel is the fire-starter, Sharon the finisher. Whitaker skillfully charts the creative process, its lulls and sudden rushes of perfect inspiration. And in the relationship between Mel and Sharon, she has created something wonderful and exceptional: a rich, deep, and emotionally true connection that will certainly steal the hearts of readers. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary Agency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Creative partners since college, Sharon and Mel's friendship crumbles after the release of their first animated hit film, a disturbing reimagining of Mel's life. After Mel's mother dies in jail and Sharon suffers from a stroke, however, they relearn how to support each other and forge ahead, once again as best friends and artists. When they visit Sharon's rural hometown, Sharon shares dark secrets from her past the impetus for their next controversial movie. With the nonstop tension of a soap opera, Whitaker's debut traces all the big fights and revelations with care. Both women make thoughtless decisions, which readers will only sympathize with because Sharon's narrative voice is so visceral and because Mel is utterly compelling. A charismatic lesbian, she overindulges in everything: drinking, smoking, and, most of all, her passion for drawing stories most people are too afraid to tell. Serious artists will especially relate to Sharon and Mel's journey, but The Animators is recommended for anyone who enjoys unsettling dramas about people who can't escape themselves.--Hyzy, Biz Copyright 2016 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
Unexpected and nuanced and pulsing with life, Whitakers debut cuts straight to the heart of the creative process.From the minute Sharon Kisses meets Mel Vaught, the women are inseparable. Both are visual art majors with obvious talent. Both are from the rural south (Sharon: East Kentucky, Mel: Central Florida), united by their shared white trashiness (Mels words)a rarity at their posh East Coast liberal arts college. And both have a passion, an unquenchable thirst, for comics. Im gonna be a cartoonist, Mel says, the first night they hang out. Animate. What else is there? By graduation, they are not just best friends, but also artistic partners. Ten years later, theyre living and working together, still in a piece-of-crap studio in Brooklyn. They make small, thoughtful cartoons and out-of-mainstream animation shorts for a thinking womans audience, according to critics. Their first full-length feature, an autobiographical project based on Mels childhood, wins them an ultraprestigious grant. They are a perfectly mismatched pair: Sharon is curvy, consistent, and perpetually lovelorn; Mel is thin and gay, the life of the party. But transforming their private pasts into public art comes at a cost, and as the novel progresses and both women are struck by different kinds of tragedies, Sharon and Mel are forced to come to terms with their families, themselves, and the painful limitations of their bond. Sweeping and intimate at once, the novel is an exquisite portrait of a life-defining partnership. Whitaker captures the shifting dynamics between Mel and Sharonbetween all the characters, reallywith such precision and sharpness that its hard to let them go.Empathetic but never sentimental; a book that creeps up on you and then swallows you whole. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.