DOGS OF SUMMER

An unnamed narrator—known only as Shit, the nickname bestowed on her by her best friend—recounts the events of an emotionally tumultuous summer in a working-class community in the Canary Islands.

Shit and Isora are schoolgirls, and the end of their school year marks the beginning of what passes for summer vacation in their nontouristy area of Tenerife. After her mother’s death, Isora is being parented by her harsh grandmother, who runs the village’s minimarket. Shit’s parents disappear all day to jobs supporting the island’s construction and tourist trades. Left to their own devices, the two inseparable girls pass their days playing with Barbies, watching telenovelas, obsessing over pop lyrics, and exploring their nascent sexuality. Isora is in search of experiences of all sorts; less-assertive Shit develops a growing obsession with Isora. Looming over the girls’ beleaguered existence are an omnipresent cloud cover of dust and the island’s volcanic mountain; a day at the beach seems like an unattainable goal. Abreu, who writes both prose and poetry in Spanish, charts the girls’ summer course to adolescence in straightforward, nonromantic prose interspersed with occasional poetic, dream- or nightmarelike passages. This translation from Spanish by Sanches retains the slang and idioms of the neighborhood dialect, enhancing the well-grounded sense of place established by Abreu. Comparisons to another duo of similarly disadvantaged childhood friends created by Elena Ferrante may seem inevitable. Any actual similarities between the pairs fade early on in the work as Abreu’s girls work their way through weight-shaming, an apparent local obsession with excrement, masturbation, and sexual obsession. This frank exploration of the work of growing up as a girl in a place with limited horizons (don’t forget the clouds!) illuminates while it disturbs.

This is not Little Women.