Like a Dog

by Tara Jepsen

"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 a brutal fact of her stark realism that brings both laughter and tears."— Karen Tongson , author of Queer Suburban Imaginaries "How can this be Tara Jepsen's first book? Her inimitable voice has been a beloved part of the underground art scene for years—in comedy, performance, and personal essays. With her fiction debut, she turns all her pathos and humor on her protagonist Paloma as she explores the eternal pursuit for love and meaning among and between humans. Jepsen’s specialty is the off-kilter observation or indignant proclamation that hits you in the funny bone and then resonates with real soul. I loved this book. I’m ecstatic she could lasso her eccentric and significant cosmology and weave it into this beautiful story."— Beth Lisick , author of Yokohama Threeway and Other Stories , co-founder of the Porchlight Storytelling Series

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Novels

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Pattie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this book at City Lights in San Fran -- in fact it is published by them. It is quirky, odd and a bit too graphic in a way that often turned me off. I felt the pain and hope through Paloma and her experiences but the novel lived in a sort of despair. The reviews claiming it was sidesplittingly funny were head scratching to me. I didn't find humor in her standup act(although her descriptions of others was often amusing), and neither did the audience in the novel. Paloma tries to work through confusion, fear, feminism, her upbringing and her brother's addiction, all while selling drugs and skateboarding. It is an odd book but had many moments of authenticity. It was well-written, but not a book I really enjoyed.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narrator of this tale - disarmingly earnest, endearingly wry, and (at times) shockingly earthy - watches helplessly as her brother is consumed by addiction. This heartbreaking, if familiar, story plays out in a milieu of druggy, skateboarding bros that's fascinating in-and-of itself.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someone on Reddit said this was a good book, so I read it! And goddamn, I loved it.

I used to live in the Bay Area and I hung out with a fair number of skateboarding punks there. I don't know that Paloma would call herself a "punk," but certainly there is some overlap. This book reminded me so much of one friend of mine there in particular that I texted her and begged her to read this book, to help inspire her to keep writing too (she mostly makes zines). The narration's sardonic voice, her disgust with the physical, and the mockery of life's every-day absurdities was so recognizable and relatable for anyone who lives on the fringes, especially the Bay Area fringes. And of course it was a pleasure for so much of the story to take place in an area of SF that I'm pretty familiar with--the Mission, Bernal Heights, Precita Park, the streets off Valencia. I've been to El Rio many times. Fun! Not the bar, necessarily (I kinda hate bars), but the book being set in places I'm familiar with. If she'd referenced The Knockout or Thrillhouse, I'd have freaked, thinking Tara Jepson MUST know some people in common with me.

ANYWAY, this is the kind of book that, if you like it, you know who else will like it, and you recommend it to them, and then they read it and recommend it to someone else who would like it and it gets passed around forever.

[Kaye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book at City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco. It's well written and sometimes humorous. It's interesting and insightful about a life style that is completely foreign to me, a 70 yr old white bread Midwesterner. Overall I found it mostly depressing--about directionless thirty-somethings into skateboarding, drugs and alcohol. I'm glad I read it but overall it's a bit too gritty for me.

[Sian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved the writing style of this but think I may be a teeny bit over reading about drugs and alcohol.

[Tia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, sad, insightful, honest, interesting. I got into it.

[William Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this quick portrait, the main character is a directionless young woman in Southern California who lives to skateboard, especially inside drained swimming pools, which are apparently prized and mapped for that use. She's over thirty, a little old to have a sensorimotor obsession like skateboarding, but maybe it shows that her restless ennui is a personality or even a neurological trait, not a mere situational reaction. Her beloved brother, Peter, has similarly agitated neurology, but he has turned to drugs for relief.

Paloma urges her brother to stay clean, but she doesn't nag him. Rather, she treats him with restraint and love, qualities that show the tender underside of her tough punk persona. The two of them get involved in a marijuana farm in NoCal and for a while they make some money, but Peter is an addict, and you know that story rarely ends well.

The characters are fresh and interesting, though painted in watercolors, not oils. They are thin on the canvas. You don't have much sense of how they became what they are. Being an addict is like being possessed by the devil, so write Peter off, but what about Paloma? She is presented in a series of snapshots, so we don't know her arc, or at least, I don't. She's interesting for being nonconformist, but I kept wondering, what is her pain? Maybe the shredding of family bonds, maybe gender dysphoria. We must guess.

Jepson, Tara (2017). Like a Dog. San Francisco: City Light Publishers/Sister Spit, 160 pp.

[Daniel Levesque · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I know this isn’t going to be a popular idea but I want to cultivate a secondary full bush out of my butt.”
I love this book and laughed my ass off, Jepsen’s writing is so packed with humor, yet don’t be fooled; it is pierced with brutal honesty and truth. The often odd feeling of being in a body is so well described that I feel like I stubbed my toe. Like hard, to the level of hopping around the room. Get this book.

[Forest Juziuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think I may have to revisit this one when I'm in a better mood or something. The extracts I read totally cracked me up but I didn't find myself laughing at parts that were funny. I'd go back and read them and crack up but I blew through this baby in 24 hours. I liked and related to the story – and it was wonderful to revisit some SF haunts vicariously.

[Emily Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the point of view that Like A Dog takes on contemporary San Francisco. In a city that so often feels shiny and entitled with its own wealth, this underground voice is incredibly refreshing. I'll carry the joys of dried up swimming pools and sweat pants with me for as long as I also carry the incredible heartbreak of this brief family saga.

[manasa k · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOVED

such a good character voice for paloma!! equal parts so relatably funny and in the same breath very honest n bleak. felt that sentence where she was like sometimes i wonder if anyone is experiencing gender the same exact way as me and then starts to fantasize about being a mediocre standup comedian

[Tgill · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I don't know why being female makes me so mad when at the same time it's who I want to be." I love this book so much. A great story about screwing up, addiction, messed up families, and how you can love somebody but also dislike them at the same time.

[Christina Cola · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to explain how much I loved this book. At times I wanted to cry because it felt like I was reading pages from my own journal. Cheers to Tara Jepsen, and I will read anything and everything else she publishes.

[Ronda Canary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rough story, not something I enjoyed except for the skateboarding. The writing was well done. Just wish it was a different story.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine enough, but all the reviews on the book jacket and the City Lights emails stressed the humor in the book and I think the book and I just don't mesh on the humor spectrum.

[Isadora Goudsblom · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Lisa Barron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome!!!!!! Female skater over 30 - hells yeah!!! I needed this. Thank you for this book Tara Jepsen- and keep on skating

[John Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful. Might be my favorite book of all time. Can't wait to read it again.

[Bee Eze · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book yanked my heart all over the place

[Deanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would say I lean more toward a 3.5/5 on this because I found it very funny and the engrossing stream of consciousness swiftly carries you downstream through the narrative. I raced through the pages, desperately wanting to know what was going to happen, who Paloma would become or reveal herself to be… I know the stories are reality-adjacent and real people often don’t grow or change as you hope for them to but I could not help the swell of disappointment and dissatisfaction with the way the characters and story stall out as the book ends.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

LIKE A DOG was a fast read, largely because the stream of consciousness writing plunged the narrative toward it's inevitable (and familiar) end. I felt like I couldn't stop reading, though it wasn't because I was deeply interested or invested in the story. In many ways, I resented—and grudgingly admired—Paloma. She chooses to live in the booze-soaked margins, living moment to moment on her shoestring weed-dollar budget. But it didn't feel like any sort of real struggle. You get the impression that her parents have money, that they've always had resources, and that at any moment she could fall back on their charity to keep existing. It's privilege, and it feels gross to me. At the same time, I feel that pull to stop doing something responsible, give up on conscious consumption and capitalism and do whatever feels right. Fuck the 40-hour work week, right? And then there's Peter. Peter's story gutted me, if only because I've seen it played live. I recognized the patterns, promises. The relief, if not closure.

Was it enough? I don't know. It's not a traditional narrative.

For me, the writing truly felt short whenever Jepsen tried to pull the narrative out of the moment and make a larger commentary on society—especially in the comedy sections. It rang hollow, especially from a character who isn't being forced into her life circumstances. Her story swings so wildly from moment to moment that coming up for air to say something like, "it's hard being a woman!" made me want to roll my eyes, even if I actually agree with her.