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Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu x-book

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Dogs of Summer

Narrator
Adela Leiro
Publisher
Orion
Publish Date
9 June 2022
Run Time
4 hours 16 minutes
Format
x-book®

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What to expect

'Bold, dazzling, hilarious' FERNANDA MELCHOR
'A revelation' NEW YORK TIMES
'As sultry as the summer weather' GUARDIAN
'Sensual and dirty, absurdist and tragic. Abreu's talent is thrilling' 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.

Translated by Julia Sanches

'The sentences blast off the pages' JAMES BRINKLEY
'Shows girlhood as it really was' ANNA BEECHER
'A force of nature' PILAR QUINTANA
'I have a new favourite writer' RACHAEL ALLEN

Critics Review

  • 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 God Complex

  • 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

    Pilar Quintana

  • 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

See more reviews
  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

User Reviews

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Details

Author
Andrea Abreu
Narrator
Adela Leiro
Duration
4 hours 16 minutes
Release Date
9 June 2022
ISBN
9781474624107
Format
x-book®
Publisher
Orion
Genre
Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general

Synopsis

'Bold, dazzling, hilarious' FERNANDA MELCHOR'A revelation' NEW YORK TIMES'As sultry as the summer weather' GUARDIAN 'Sensual and dirty, absurdist and tragic. Abreu's talent is thrilling' IRISH TIMESStuck 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. Translated by Julia Sanches'The sentences blast off the pages' JAMES BRINKLEY 'Shows girlhood as it really was' ANNA BEECHER'A force of nature' PILAR QUINTANA'I have a new favourite writer' RACHAEL ALLEN

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