As in Rita Indiana’s debut novel, Papi, it is a child’s voice—innocent, but with a certain sarcastic edge—that holds forth on a range of topics in Nombres y animales. The narrator discusses animals, music, and television, as well as—more revealingly—family, mothers and fathers, initiation, learning, and what may exist after life. The everyday and the dream-like collide in this novel that reverberates with echoes of the Caribbean and that describes what it means to come of age in that region, what it means to be a woman in Latin America, and what it means to write in the present day.

Rita Indiana is a Dominican-born Puerto Rican novelist and short story writer. Her previous works include Ciencia succión, La estrategia de Chochueca, Papi, and Rumiantes.