Like a Dog
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
"Tara Jepsen's Like a Dog is outrageously funny and soul-scrapingly grim, in the tradition of our most intrepid, shameless, and shame-filled comedians and storytellers. It also announces a singular new voice in American fiction—one which is deeply alive, hard-hitting, and tender."—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
A skateboarder in her early thirties, Paloma is aimlessly winging it through life. She takes low-paying jobs, drinks neon-colored wine coolers in the park, and drives to the Central Valley to skate the empty swimming pools dotting the sun-blasted landscape.
Paloma struggles to have a relationship with her brother Peter, whose opiate addiction makes that nearly impossible. Her own delusions about the nature of addiction help to keep the threat of Peter's death by overdose at a comfortable enough distance, and as he slides into a dangerous spiral, Paloma tries out the world of stand-up comedy, happier than she's ever been.
Praise for Like a Dog:
“This book beat the crap out of me. I am bruised and laughing. Thank you Tara Jepsen, may I have another?”—Daniel Handler, author of All The Dirty Parts
"Tara Jepsen captures the absurd, animal humor of residing in a human female body on planet Earth like no other, and Like a Dog sets it loose within a hazy California underground of abandoned skate pools, weed farms and comedy open mics. Eccentric and insidery, taking on the bonds of family and addiction, the effort to find a life and the drive to end it, Like a Dog brims with hyper-conscious gems of hilarity and pathos."—Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave
"Tara Jepsen’s blunt eloquence takes us deep into the difficulty of our desires, where the things we most want—intimacy, realness, safety, guarantees—are the things we are the least likely to get. In the desolate hardscapes and nowheres of California, north and south, she reveals how closeness can still be alienating: a brutal fact of her stark realism that brings both laughter and tears."—Karen Tongson, author of Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jepsen's emotional, challenging first novel focuses on family and addiction. Paloma drifts through her underemployed early 30s, skating in empty pools in Northern California suburbs and indifferently pursuing both male and female sexual partners. Her brother, Peter, a shakily recovered addict, connects her to a marijuana farm where he has a job lined up for both of them. Paloma's will be to travel to Los Angeles as a salesperson to the famous for the farm's pricey products, which are on the cusp of legalization. Though she proves successful at selling, she yearns to do stand-up comedy. Her imagined sets are wry takes on being a female comic and feature clever physical humor, but once she's onstage, her awkwardness derails her. Despite her missteps, she finds increased happiness, stability, and hope. Peter, however, spirals back into his drug addiction, finally requiring Paloma to abandon her willful ignorance of his problems. Jepsen's pace feels almost frantic as Paloma flits between her own bad choices and conflicting desires. Though the tone and themes are heavy, there's a sardonic humor and queer vitality to balance the bleakness. This is a difficult but urgent novel about the costs of dependency and the ways people obscure what they don't want to see.
