A review by hollyrebecca
Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu

challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

This story is raw, visceral, and disgusting in it’s depiction of girlhood and puberty in poverty. I rarely read books that make me feel nauseous and fascinated at the same time, but this book definitely achieved that.

We follow our heroine over the course of a summer in her home in the mountains of Tenerife. In this short span of time we see, from her 10-year-old eyes, friendships and family in both the mundane and the adventurous.

Abreu uses a very interesting technique for story telling to evoke our childish narrator, the prose being unlike anything I’ve read. Whole chapters are told as single sentences without any punctuation. There’s no differentiation between speech and other text throughout. It culminates into a piece of work that reads as both a diary and an internal monologue.

Our heroine has a very restricted worldview, driven in part by her having no knowledge or interest in seeing the world past a certain point of her village. This is reflected in the cultural references throughout the book, which made me feel like these characters existed in almost a different world. The slang terms and child-like misnomers for recognisable English-name brands, such as The Sinsons rather than The Simpsons, perpetuated this sensation.

I think this book was very well written, I just personally wouldn’t read this again as some of the graphic descriptions made me feel very unsettled. I appreciate that this was the purpose of the novel, to show you the unsettling realities of growing up in such an environment while tackling some difficult topics, but it unfortunately wasn’t for me.

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