Book Review: Dogs of Summer

Dogs of Summer
By Andrea Abreu
Review by Rosa

Written with an unrestrained, clumsily poetic feel, Dogs of Summer transports the reader into the sticky summer of the Canary Islands, where two best friends’ obsession with one another can only be trumped by one thing- their desire to go to the beach. Andrea Abreu describes the girls’ relationship in such a grotty way, using visceral and gross imagery of food, bodily fluids and functions to convey the brutality of girlhood, the depths of their obsession, and give their developing sexuality a space that is far from nice, neat and traditionally feminine. Interwoven with all this description, however, is an acute commentary on feeling your existence defined heavily against another person’s and how that shapes you.

Dogs of Summer made me squirm in so many places, and yet intriguingly, it was also beautiful and tender and made me reflect on childhood summers: spending long hot days in your swimsuit, the feelings of grass, gravel, and sand clinging to wet skin, and staying out long past the sun had set, not at all worried about what could happen tomorrow. For those that enjoyed Brutes by Dizz Tate.