On a hot day in late June, a young girl kneels outside a convent, then falls on her face. When the nuns take her in, they name her Dolores.
Dolores adjusts to the rhythm of her new life – to the nuns with wild hairs curling from their chins, the soup chewed as if it were meat, the bells that ring throughout the day.
But in the dark, private theatre of her mind are memories – of love motels lit by neon red hearts, discos in abandoned hospitals and a boy called Angelo.
And inside her, a baby is growing.
Dolores adjusts to the rhythm of her new life – to the nuns with wild hairs curling from their chins, the soup chewed as if it were meat, the bells that ring throughout the day.
But in the dark, private theatre of her mind are memories – of love motels lit by neon red hearts, discos in abandoned hospitals and a boy called Angelo.
And inside her, a baby is growing.
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Reviews
Dolores is a glowing, beating heart of a book; Curtis' sentences manage to be both mysterious and precise, creating a potent atmosphere that resonates beyond its brevity
Dolores reads the way a first novel should: short, lyrical, intense, and with adventurous ambition
Rich, melodic and marked by a troubling sensuality, Dolores depicts the strange pleasures a young girl might take in her body, and the perils and liberations such pleasures hold
A succinct, intense story ... this atmospheric debut is a deliciously satisfying read about a girl at a critical juncture in her life
Dolores is propulsive, atmospheric, wonderfully peculiar, a little dark. A dreamy hallucination
Precise, intense and aching, Dolores moves seamlessly between sensuality and realism. I read it in a couple of fevered hours and lived in its heady atmosphere for days afterwards.
Short and mysterious, Dolores is a compelling, one-sitting read ... Curtis writes the close-up details of life in the convent with as much intensity as the burgeoning sexuality of a young girl, and the two elements chime in a strange harmony
Blurring the borders past and present, sex and religion, desire and shame, Lauren Aimee Curtis's debut novel Dolores is a short and potent story of a young woman in trouble
This skilfully written and disquieting novella takes a character from contemporary life, gives her a classic female problem, and places her in an almost timeless setting, and the result is a hypnotic and powerfully affecting read
Dolores is a taut and moody novella ... In burnished prose, Curtis raises potent questions about how women control their bodies and destinies when subject to institutional forces.