Andrea Abreu's 'Dogs of Summer': An in-depth exploration of working-class adolescenthood

Review: Abreu, Andrea. Dogs of Summer: A Novel. Translated by Carolina Hoyos. (United States: Blackstone Publishing, 2023).

Andrea Abreu has earned admiration and recognition as a novelist after her novel Perros de verano was translated from Spanish to German, French, Italian, and then into English as Dogs of Summer. Because of her success, Granta, an English publishing house and literary magazine, selected Abreu among their Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists in 2021. Abreu’s pride for her family’s working-class background, the place where she comes from, Tenerife, and her Canarian Spanish dialect are perceptible throughout her novel. Although the island where the story takes place does not have a name, there are references to places in Tenerife, and there is a volcano overlooking the inhabitants’ neighborhood which could be an allusion to the Teide. The detailed description of places in the novel takes readers around varied sceneries and spaces that influence both the characters and the narrative itself. Dogs of Summer provides a sneak peek into common daily life affairs from a young adolescent’s perspective. It is also an ode to the Canarian Spanish dialect, and an invitation to explore realist narration through the senses. 

Dogs of Summer is a novel that invites readers to discover life in a touristic island far away from the all-inclusive hotels and one day tours. Abreu introduces two main characters: Shit, the first-person narrator, and her best friend Isora, the one who refers to her friend as Shit. There is no reference to the narrator’s real name. Both Shit’s and the island’s names are a mystery. The story takes place during a short, but exciting and adventurous summer that the two characters spend together. They are around 10 years old and on the verge of welcoming their teen years, and with them lively experiences with friendship, sexuality, boundaries (and lack of them), family, school, boys, authorities, and many other axes of teen life. Most of the story develops at a neighborhood where everyone knows each other well and experiences similar harsh economic situations. However, the two characters also move around in other neighborhoods, the beach, the fields, computer classes, fancy hotel areas, and other places around the island. Shit’s parents are working most of the time while Isora’s parents are out of the picture, her mother passed away and her dad is not mentioned, leaving both in the care of their grandmothers. This lack of constant supervision grants the girls the freedom they need to experience life on their own and forge their own luck. 

Isora is a wild and open-minded person. She speaks up her mind and earns older people’s trust easily. She is curious and adventurous, and she influences Shit to go along with her ideas. Shit, on the other hand, is more prone to thinking about the consequences of their actions even though, at the end of the day, she ends up doing what Isora says. Shit loves her friend, and the way she expresses herself about Isora signals that she is the most important person to her. There is no clear boundary between romantic love and friendship; and through Shit’s descriptions and narration, the reader empathizes with this confusion. Shit’s love for Isora is explicit, but also the anger and frustration toward Isora and her careless behavior. They spend most of their time together; and when they are not together, Shit is dreading each minute until they can reunite again. 

The reader is in for a treat while having access to Shit’s thoughts and experiences with her neighbors, family, and friends around the island. Through her perspective we are introduced to the inhabitants’ daily routines, such as going to the mini market, going to church, cooking, working, among other provincial activities. The readers are invited to all these places while the two main characters discover themselves through the island, which mostly offers a safe haven for them. To highlight the two characters’ daily lives, Abreu evokes pop culture through lyrics and references to specific brands and television shows that set a familiar tone in the novel. On the one hand, the author showcases the two characters’ routines. They visit their neighbors and eat their food, shave their genitals, masturbate, and play with other children. On the other hand, Abreu exposes societal topics and their influence on the two main characters. For instance, although the girls give little to no importance to societal constructions such as gender, those affect them, nonetheless. What for adults might be stereotypically masculine or feminine, for the girls does not carry such difference. For example, they talk about getting thinner and prettier through dieting, gastric balloons, and purging, but these ideas come from Isora’s grandmother who criticizes her granddaughter’s size and eating habits. 

Dogs of Summer is an in-depth exploration of working-class adolescenthood, but also is an ode to language variations, more specifically, the Canarian Spanish dialect. The novel’s English translation uses a mix of English and Spanish words, especially when it comes to pop culture references, while the Spanish version stays loyal to Abreu’s dialect “el Canario.” Abreu also plays with the rules of spelling and grammar and writes English words as they would sound phonetically for a Spanish speaker (forener, foc yu). She translates the orality of the language into her writing, making it possible for readers to grasp where she comes from, how her dialect is differentiated from Castilian Spanish, and how it is influential to the characters’ identity. Besides, Abreu challenges grammar rules by using constant word repetition and offering long paragraphs with no punctuation. The author revolutionizes the use of language to validate different ways of speaking and writing but she also plays with literary strategies to differentiate her novel from what is commonly accepted. For instance, there are not explicit dialogues in the novel, but she uses language in such a creative way that the different conversations camouflaged in the text are easy to follow and the character who is speaking easy to identify. 

Finally, Abreu’s explicit and detailed narration is an invitation to activate the senses, a creative writing device that authors use to connect the readers to the story. The emotional responses that these techniques awaken invite readers to take part in the plot through the description of vivid imagery. This connection is accomplished mostly by the description of sensations, tastes, smells, noises, and landscapes. As an outcome, the novel exhibits a strengthened presence of realism because of the way that it exalts the two characters’ adventures and dilemmas, transforming the ordinary to extraordinary. Beyond doubt, Dogs of Summer is an extravagant read, which I cordially invite readers to experience. 

If this review piqued your interest, you may read an excerpt from the novel here.