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No one ever said love was easy. It takes patience and compromise, acceptance and forgiveness and sometimes ends tragically in loss. That’s life. As Tennyson said, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” but clearly he never met the characters in John Fulton’s The Animal Girl.

The collection of two novellas and three short stories is the latest release in the Yellow Shoe Fiction series from LSU Press. In these five brief glimpses Fulton takes readers on a rollercoaster ride of emotions as he explores characters in relationships on the edge of bizarre. There’s 13-year-old Holly Morris, who copes with the death of her grandmother in “Real Grief” by throwing olives at funeral attendees and making out with her neighbor in the gardening shed. And then there’s Leah, the lonely adolescent girl in the novella-length title story who is trying to master a myriad of emotions: grief over her mother’s death, anger at the fact her father has moved on and has a new girlfriend, lust for the clumsy researcher she works for and love for the animals in her care during her summer job at the research lab.

Fulton masters the tenderness of new love and the awkwardness of starting over in “Hunters” and “The Sleeping Woman.” He tells the stories of Kate, a middle-aged mom who keeps her cancer a secret from the new man in her life, and Evelyn, who tries to build a relationship with a man emotionally scarred by his past. Rounding out these heartbreaking and heartwarming tales is “A Small Matter,” in which Martin agonizes over not standing up for his wife—a situation that threatens to destroy an already troubled relationship.

The Animal Girl is a unique collection that can make you smile, as Fulton superbly analyzes the humorous clumsiness of dating, and rip at your heart with the grim realities of death. No one ever said love was easy, but reading about love in Fulton’s stories is worth the ride.