The Animals by Christian Kiefer W.W. Norton & Company, $25.95, 309 pages, ISBN 978-0-87140-883-9 Have you ever experienced poverty? Not the sort where you bounced a check once, but chronic poverty—the type that is constant, relentless and crushing—the kind that destroys self respect, hope and confidence? It’s a condition capable of wrecking relationships and driving some persons to acts of desperation and outright stupidity . . . and it’s