Top

We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

Dolores

On sale

25th July 2019

Price: £6.99

Select a format

Selected: Audiobook Downloadable / ISBN-13: 9781409189527
See All

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

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.

What's Inside

Read More Read Less

Reviews

Julia Armfield, author of SALTSLOW
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.
Sydney Morning Herald, 'Pick of the Week
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
Sue Rainsford, author of FOLLOW ME TO GROUND
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
Amina Cain, author of INDELICACY
Dolores is propulsive, atmospheric, wonderfully peculiar, a little dark. A dreamy hallucination
Nell Zink, author of THE WALLCREEPER and MISLAID
Dolores reads the way a first novel should: short, lyrical, intense, and with adventurous ambition
Irish Times
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
BookRiot
A succinct, intense story ... this atmospheric debut is a deliciously satisfying read about a girl at a critical juncture in her life
NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2020
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.
Megan Hunter, author of THE END WE START FROM
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
Observer
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