'A force of nature. It leaves you stranded on a rich and prophetic insular world of women and low, grey, clouds that merge with the sea' Pilar Quintana A debut novel about a long, hot summer in the Canary Islands and the friendship between two young girls
'A force of nature. It leaves you stranded on a rich and prophetic insular world of women and low, grey, clouds that merge with the sea' Pilar Quintana A debut novel about a long, hot summer in the Canary Islands and the friendship between two young girls
Translated by Julia Sanches.
'A force of nature. A rich and prophetic world of women and low, grey clouds that merge with the sea. Pure poetry' Pilar Quintana'Bold, dazzling, hilarious. Andrea Abreu is a lively meteorite in the landscape of Hispanic Literature' Fernanda Melchor'I am overwhelmed. What a marvellous book, what a miracle' Sara MesaIt is June and Shit is sad. She knows she will not get to leave her neighbourhood that summer, and the beach is far, far away. And that clouds like the bottom of a donkey's belly will hover all summer over her town, high among the volcanoes of northern Tenerife. But Shit - our nine-year-old narrator - has a best friend, Isora. Shit likes everything about Isora. The colour of her arms and her hair and her eyes. Her handwriting and the way she wrote the letter g with a huge tail. The way she called her shit because poop was a beautiful thing like the mist round the pines. But she envies her too. Envies her grits and gut. The way she talks to grown ups. The fact that she had got her period and had pubes on her minky. As the summer goes on, Shit finds it increasingly hard to keep up with Isora - one year older and growing up at full tilt without her. When Shit's submissiveness veers into obsession and a painful sexual awakening, desire becomes indistinguishable from intimate violence.Braiding prose poetry with bachata lyrics and the gritty humour of Canary dialect, Dogs of Summer is a brutal picture of girlhood in the 90s and a story, told with exquisite yearning, of a friendship that simmers into erotic desire over the course of one hot summer.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 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 SanzAndrea Abreu (Tenerife, 1995) studied journalism at La Laguna University and moved to Madrid in 2017 to study a masters. She is a regular contributor for Tentaciones-El Pais, LOLA (BuzzFeed), Vice, Zenda and Quimera, among others. Her debut novel, Panza de Burro, was first published in Spain to great acclaim. In 2021, Andrea Abreu was included in Granta's new selection in a decade of the Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists.
Translated by Julia Sanches. 'A force of nature. A rich and prophetic world of women and low, grey clouds that merge with the sea. Pure poetry' Pilar Quintana 'Bold, dazzling, hilarious. Andrea Abreu is a lively meteorite in the landscape of Hispanic Literature' Fernanda Melchor 'I am overwhelmed. What a marvellous book, what a miracle' Sara Mesa It is June and Shit is sad. She knows she will not get to leave her neighbourhood that summer, and the beach is far, far away. And that clouds like the bottom of a donkey's belly will hover all summer over her town, high among the volcanoes of northern Tenerife.But Shit - our nine-year-old narrator - has a best friend, Isora. Shit likes everything about Isora. The colour of her arms and her hair and her eyes. Her handwriting and the way she wrote the letter g with a huge tail. The way she called her shit because poop was a beautiful thing like the mist round the pines.But she envies her too. Envies her grits and gut. The way she talks to grown ups. The fact that she had got her period and had pubes on her minky.As the summer goes on, Shit finds it increasingly hard to keep up with Isora - one year older and growing up at full tilt without her. When Shit's submissiveness veers into obsession and a painful sexual awakening, desire becomes indistinguishable from intimate violence.Braiding prose poetry with bachata lyrics and the gritty humour of Canary dialect, Dogs of Summer is a brutal picture of girlhood in the 90s and a story, told with exquisite yearning, of a friendship that simmers into erotic desire over the course of one hot summer.
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