3.0
Dogs of Summer
ByPublisher Description
"[A] firecracker of a debut."
—The New York Times
"Andrea Abreu’s debut novel about two girls in the summer heat of Tenerife is perfect for these dog days."
—Shreya Chattopadhyay, The New York Times Book Review
My Brilliant Friend meets Blue is the Warmest Color in this lyrical debut novel set in a working-class neighborhood of the Canary Islands—a story about two girls coming of age in the early aughts and a friendship that simmers into erotic desire over the course of one hot summer.
High near the volcano of northern Tenerife, an endless ceiling of cloud cover traps the working class in an abject, oppressive heat. Far away from the island’s posh resorts, two girls dream of hitching a ride down to the beach and escaping their horizonless town.
It’s summer, 2005, and our ten-year-old narrator is consumed by thoughts of her best friend Isora. Isora is rude and bossy, but she’s also vivacious and brave; grownups prefer her, and boys do, too. That's why sometimes she gets jealous of Isora, who already has hair on her vagina and soft, round breasts. But she's definitely not jealous that Isora’s mother is dead, nor that Isora's fat, foul-mouthed grandmother has her on a diet, so that she is constantly sticking her fingers down her throat. Besides, she would do anything for Isora: gorge herself on cakes when her friend wants to watch, follow her to the bathroom when she takes a shit, log into chat rooms to swap dirty instant messages with strangers. But increasingly, our narrator finds it hard to keep up with Isora, who seems to be growing up at full tilt without her—and as her submissiveness veers into a painful sexual awakening, desire grows indistinguishable from intimate violence.
Braiding prose poetry with bachata lyrics and the gritty humor of Canary dialect, Dogs of Summer is a story of exquisite yearning, a brutal picture of girlhood and a love song written for the vital community it portrays.
—The New York Times
"Andrea Abreu’s debut novel about two girls in the summer heat of Tenerife is perfect for these dog days."
—Shreya Chattopadhyay, The New York Times Book Review
My Brilliant Friend meets Blue is the Warmest Color in this lyrical debut novel set in a working-class neighborhood of the Canary Islands—a story about two girls coming of age in the early aughts and a friendship that simmers into erotic desire over the course of one hot summer.
High near the volcano of northern Tenerife, an endless ceiling of cloud cover traps the working class in an abject, oppressive heat. Far away from the island’s posh resorts, two girls dream of hitching a ride down to the beach and escaping their horizonless town.
It’s summer, 2005, and our ten-year-old narrator is consumed by thoughts of her best friend Isora. Isora is rude and bossy, but she’s also vivacious and brave; grownups prefer her, and boys do, too. That's why sometimes she gets jealous of Isora, who already has hair on her vagina and soft, round breasts. But she's definitely not jealous that Isora’s mother is dead, nor that Isora's fat, foul-mouthed grandmother has her on a diet, so that she is constantly sticking her fingers down her throat. Besides, she would do anything for Isora: gorge herself on cakes when her friend wants to watch, follow her to the bathroom when she takes a shit, log into chat rooms to swap dirty instant messages with strangers. But increasingly, our narrator finds it hard to keep up with Isora, who seems to be growing up at full tilt without her—and as her submissiveness veers into a painful sexual awakening, desire grows indistinguishable from intimate violence.
Braiding prose poetry with bachata lyrics and the gritty humor of Canary dialect, Dogs of Summer is a story of exquisite yearning, a brutal picture of girlhood and a love song written for the vital community it portrays.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities597 Reviews
3.0
Julien
Created about 21 hours agoShare
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kristen jarman
Created 6 days agoShare
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“i hope i never have to hear the word minky again. also, sexualizing children is a line. i understand exploring young curiosity of childhood but a lot of this was just cocsa not explained properly.”
Millie
Created 6 days agoShare
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“Translated from Spanish, two ten year old girls living on the Spanish coast explore their neighbourhood during their summer break. While their families are out working all day the girls are left unsupervised to do as they please.
The chapters are short as if they are snippets of a memory, and Abreu describes the gross things they do and say with no apprehension. The girls have a codependent relationship, they see each other over day, they love and hate each other at times. There’s also a weird sexual theme they share where they kiss and ‘grind’ together.
From the start the girls are desperate to go to the beach but they live too far away and have nobody to take them. Towards the end one of them goes to the beach and doesn’t come back.
Funny, dark, humiliating and nostalgic.”Andy Trendell
Created 12 days agoShare
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