Reviews

Bret Easton Ellis och de andra hundarna by Lina Wolff

vulpasvulpas's review against another edition

3.0

This book was beautiful and confusing and wonderful

coolkidlily's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

michaelrohmann's review against another edition

2.0

I'm a little disappointed. The story itself is well-written and I liked the characters, for the most part, but I feel a little cheated that the brothel with the stray dogs did not play a bigger part in the overall story (It is the first sentence in the blurb and after reading this I believe Wolff could have crafted an excellent novel exploring the dynamic between the female sex workers, the Johns, and the stray dogs and the power dynamic between all three factions). Honestly, that was the major selling point for me going into this book and it was only introduced in the last third of the book and only talked about for 3 pages. If I had gone in knowing the brothel was not going to be a huge plot point I would have enjoyed the story a lot more than I did.

lonesomereader's review against another edition

5.0

It feels like a provocation for an author to include another author's name in the title of her book – especially if she calls that other author a dog within the subtitle. The name comes out of a section of the novel about a brothel in a run-down town called Caudal in Spain. There's a kennel at the back filled only with male dogs who are given the names of male authors after a feminist comes to visit the prostitutes who work there. There's also a canary bird called Harold Bloom. When clients are cruel to the prostitutes they take it out on the dogs by feeding them rotten meat. Later this image of consuming rotten meat is repeated when a man named Rodrigo dreams of a starving man who is only given putrid scraps from a butcher to eat. Images of putrid sustenance in place of nourishment for men who have heretofore escaped punishment have a strong resonance in this “civilized” society. Rodrigo is telling this story to a girl named Araceli who comes to see him at a hotel on her very first job as a call girl. Araceli is fascinated by a neighbouring woman named Alba Cambo who writes dark short stories that she and her mother seek out to read. It's difficult to pin down a single plot for this novel set in the Spanish landscape. It's essentially a collection of anecdotes, yet they all feel eerily tied together and are frequently fascinating. What Wolff gets at through all her divergences and stories within dreams within stories is a special commentary on the way self-perception works in conjunction with the way others view us.

Read my full review on LonesomeReader review of Bret Easton Ellis and The Other Dogs by Lina Wolff