My Favorite Girlfriend was a French Bulldog
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
My Favorite Girlfriend was a French Bulldog is a novel told in fifteen stories, linked by the same protagonist, our narrator, who--in her own voice and channeling the voices of others--creates an unsparing, multigenerational portrait of her native Cuba. Though she feels suffocated by the island and decides to leave, hers is not just a political novel--nor just a queer novel, an immigrant novel, a feminist novel--but a deeply existential one, in which mortality, corporeality, bureaucracy, emotional and physical violence, and the American Dream define the long journey of our narrator and her beloved pet dog, who gives the book both its title and its unforgettable ending. In its daring style and structure--both playful and profound, youthful and mature - and its frank discussion of political and sexual identity, My Favorite Girlfriend was a French Bulldog marks the emergence of an original and essential new voice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This profound and delightful novel-in-stories by Cuban poet Iglesias, her English-language debut, is a breathtaking exploration of identity, country, art, and family. Iglesias's narrator slips with ease into a different voice in each chapter, though they all retain facets of her consciousness. In "Politics," the narrator explores her relationship with Cuba through the reminiscences of her dead grandfather. "Monster" is written in a heightened bureaucratic voice, a formal choice that makes concrete the narrator's stress as she navigates the emigration process. The chapters that follow reveal different aspects of the narrator's identity an erudite queer woman; a U.S. migr ; a poet with a deep knowledge of literary and musical history, and an all-consuming affection for her darling French bulldog. While the narrator worries about "being no one" or "accepting, that you are no one here and now," Iglesias's voice is too sure, too fresh, and too in command of form to be overlooked. Iglesias's distinctive style carries her narrator on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery through langage.
