Gregisdead121 ’s Reviews > All Them Dogs > Status Update

''Shame like a creeping
trickle down the leg. I felt like a dog that walked in his own shit. I couldn’t
meet his eyes at the best of times.''

He had the sort of grip that makes up your mind for you, says there’s no use
fighting it now.
I let him fuck me on his bed held onto his arms as he looked down at
my panting face. I could see in his eyes my own distorted reflection and
everything inside me was tighter than I needed it to be. It hurt, I roared out
and dug into. I fought back the pain. It was mine to take, not his to give.

‘Does anyone else know that you’re like this?’
‘Queer?’
He could say it. There it was, that was the danger. He could make his
mouth make that word. Just hearing it made me square my shoulders, an
impulse like when I heard those fellas laugh at me outside Fitzer’s the night
just gone. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

"I pushed into him so hard I felt like I would, wanted so badly to, go through
him and come out the other side of him as someone new. And then I was fully in his arms, in a grip I mightn’t have been able to get
out of even if I wanted to, and I looked up past the cliff of his chin towards
those cold, frigid eyes.
But he was smiling. We were both smiling."



This is my heated rivalry. Kicking & screaming omg

"When I kissed him, he seized up like a key in
the wrong lock and I felt the muscles of his neck ripple under my hand, just
for one second before his lips came apart. He loosened against me, and his
hands were warm and heavy on my waist. It was like all the weight of me
went into those hands and I was this freeform thing, no longer Tony or
Wardy but a pulse of energy feeding directly into him"

It has clicked. Now the reading begins

"The things you try not to think about. The look on Eddie Glackin’s face after
I stuck the cunt. Wide-eyed like a child who just broke something expensive.
It leaves a layer of grime on you like a charred bit of toast, and when you
scrape it all away into the sink some of you goes with it."

Tough to get into. Tony Wards gritty voice has no rhythm to hold onto making each sentence feel like 10 or so pages.

Second from the 2026 Booker Prize Longlist