Dolores

Critics Review

• Dolores is a glowing, beating heart of a book; Curtis’ sentences manage to be both mysterious and precise, creating a potent atmosphere that resonates beyond its brevity

  Megan Hunter, author of THE END WE START FROM

• Dolores reads the way a first novel should: short, lyrical, intense, and with adventurous ambition

  Nell Zink, author of THE WALLCREEPER and MISLAID

• Rich, melodic and marked by a troubling sensuality, Dolores depicts the strange pleasures a young girl might take in her body, and the perils and liberations such pleasures hold

  Sue Rainsford, author of FOLLOW ME TO GROUND

• A succinct, intense story … this atmospheric debut is a deliciously satisfying read about a girl at a critical juncture in her life

  BookRiot

• Dolores is propulsive, atmospheric, wonderfully peculiar, a little dark. A dreamy hallucination

  Amina Cain, author of INDELICACY

• Precise, intense and aching, Dolores moves seamlessly between sensuality and realism. I read it in a couple of fevered hours and lived in its heady atmosphere for days afterwards.

• Short and mysterious, Dolores is a compelling, one-sitting read … Curtis writes the close-up details of life in the convent with as much intensity as the burgeoning sexuality of a young girl, and the two elements chime in a strange harmony

  Observer

• Blurring the borders past and present, sex and religion, desire and shame, Lauren Aimee Curtis’s debut novel Dolores is a short and potent story of a young woman in trouble

  Irish Times

• This skilfully written and disquieting novella takes a character from contemporary life, gives her a classic female problem, and places her in an almost timeless setting, and the result is a hypnotic and powerfully affecting read

  Sydney Morning Herald, 'Pick of the Week

• Dolores is a taut and moody novella … In burnished prose, Curtis raises potent questions about how women control their bodies and destinies when subject to institutional forces.