Dogs of Summer
'Sensual and dirty, absurdist and tragic. Abreu's talent is thrilling to witness' Irish Times
Stuck in a working-class neighbourhood, high up among Tenerife's volcanoes, a ten-year-old girl dreams of hitching a ride to the faraway beach.
Instead she hangs out with her best friend, Isora. She likes everything about Isora. From the colour of her arms and her hair and her eyes to the way she writes the letter g with a huge tail. But she envies her too. Envies her grits and gut; her periods and her pubes; the way she is growing up at full tilt without her.
As the summer goes on and the heat becomes ever more oppressive, friendship simmers into obsession, desire into intimate violence.
'The sentences blast off the pages. Hilarious, devastating and brilliantly attuned to the erotics of friendship' Jamel Brinkley
'As sultry as the summer weather. Abreu beautifully evokes an era, in which Pokemon and Bratz dolls give way to sexual discovery' Guardian
Translated by Julia Sanches.
Review: Bold, dazzling, hilarious. Andrea Abreu is a lively meteorite in the landscape of Hispanic Literature -- Fernanda Melchor, author of International Booker-shortlisted Hurricane Season
Like the tide. A force of nature. It drags you. It submerges you. And, all of a sudden, it leaves you stranded on a rich and prophetic insular world of women and low, grey, clouds that merge with the sea. It is pure poetry. A book that carries you and makes you feel a place
Andrea Abreu's characters, like her sentences, are bold and wild. Reminiscent of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's The Discomfort of Evening, Abreu's writing twirls and clacks with tactile precision, like winding a cassette tape with a No. 2 pencil. I'll return to Dogs of Summer whenever I crave a searing, brutal shot of life -- Gabriella Burnham, author of It is Wood, It is Stone
I am overwhelmed. What a marvelous book, what a miracle -- Sara Mesa, author of Among the Hedges
Andrea turns up a notch, or turns it up ten times, in this rescue of poetic tremendismo (expressionist dirty realism). A political book: for the world that has never been given a voice before, and most of all for the phonetical shamelessness, for the syntactical violence, for the incorrectness, the localisms, the linguistic variety, because Andrea Abreu writes for her body and from her body -- Marta Sanz
It describes the state of things without beating around the bush giving way to the purest form of tenderness, innocence, and care ... It intertwines the feeling of the first love with the pain that comes with growing up -- Brenda Navarro, author of Empty Houses
Dogs of Summer weaves a powerful narrative, where bodies and hunger take over the story. It transports us to the threshold of puberty, to face a disturbing procession of fears, euphoria and daily violence. An unsweetened and unprejudiced portrait of poverty. Pure life -- Irene Vallejo, author of Papyrus
Shit. My brain just exploded. What a marvel -- Marta Orriols
Razor sharp and mesmerizing, Dogs of Summer will thump through your heart and mind. A novel that consumes and sentences to die for -- Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy
This slim novel's scope and intensity are shockingly, magnificently large, and the sentences blast off the pages with all the sordidness and wonder of early adolescence. Readers will be unable to resist the spell of Dogs of Summer, a hilarious, devastating story that is brilliantly attuned to the erotics of friendship, the intoxicating muddle of identification and desire, and the power of both the sublime and the profane. The unforgettable girls at the center of Andrea Abreu's moving debut are two of the liveliest fictional creations I've come across in quite a long time -- Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man
Andrea Abreu's characters, like her sentences, are bold and wild. Reminiscent of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's The Discomfort of Evening, Abreu's writing twirls and clacks with tactile precision, like winding a cassette tape with a No. 2 pencil. I'll return to Dogs of Summer whenever I crave a searing, brutal shot of life -- Gabriella Burnham, author of It is Wood, It is Stone
Dogs of Summer shows girlhood as it really was: brutal and tender, intimate and lonely, magical and utterly gross. I loved it -- Anna Beecher, author of Here Comes the Miracle
Nothing else matters in the world of Dogs of Summer other than what these two girls mean to each other. Every crushing, toxic, excruciating, loving, difficult and unboundaried female friendship came hurtling back to me in a tumultuous wave while reading this book, all the sores and salves of a coming-of-age relationship are here in details that feel almost too sacred to be told, but universalised in their telling. I have a new favourite writer, I will read everything she writes. I love it, I love it, I love it! -- Rachael Allen, author of Kingdomland