"Animal Stories," Jason Brown's story of a young man grappling with his mother's imminent death from a brain tumor, has received widespread acclaim as the work of a strong and up-and-coming author. In 25 and Under/Fiction, an anthology containing "Animal Stories," Brown notes that he wrote this story when he was twenty-two and his mother was in the hospital for a successful operation. "My relationship with her was bad enough that I had not gone to visit her. The guilt drove this story on," he remembers.

The story is told by the character Jamie as a recollection of his mother's recent stay in the hospital after she is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Memories from further in the past blend in and out of the moments that Jamie spends in the hospital room with his mother. These memories provide critical background information on his family life and on the state of his adult life, including his failures in school, at work, and in his love life. The memories serve as a distraction to the fact that Jamie's mother, whose hold on reality is tenuous at best, is dying a horrible death and refuses to allow the doctors to treat her. Also serving as a distraction, as well as a prompt to his reminiscing, are the nature and animal videos playing almost nonstop on the television in his mother's hospital room.