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    Dogfight, A Love Story
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    Dogfight, A Love Story
    Unavailable
    Dogfight, A Love Story
    Audiobook12 hours

    Dogfight, A Love Story

    Written by Matt Burgess

    Narrated by Ozzie Rodriguez

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    What Jonathan Lethem did for Brooklyn, Matt Burgess does for Queens in this exuberant and brilliant debut novel about a young drug dealer having a very bad weekend.

    Alfredo Batista has some worries. Okay, a lot of worries. His older brother, Jose-sorry, Tariq-is returning from a stretch in prison after an unsuccessful robbery, a burglary that Alfredo was supposed to be part of. So now everyone thinks Alfredo snitched on his brother, which may have something to do with the fact that Alfredo is now dating Tariq's ex-girlfriend, Isabel, who is eight months pregnant. Tariq's violent streak is probably #1 worry on Alfredo's list.

    Also, he needs to steal a pit bull. For the homecoming dogfight.

    Burgess brings to life the rich and vivid milieu of his hometown native Queens in all its glorious variety. Here is the real New York, a place where Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, An ­glos, African Americans, and West Indians scrap and mingle and love. But the real star here is Burgess's incredible ear for language-the voices of his characters leap off the page in riotous, spot-on dialogue. The outer boroughs have their own language, where a polite greeting is fraught with menace, and an insult can be the expression of the most tender love.

    With a story as intricately plotted as a Shakespearean comedy-or revenge tragedy, for that matter-and an electrically colloquial prose style, Dogfight, a Love Story establishes Matt Burgess as an exuberant new voice in contemporary literature. The great Queens novel has arrived.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 21, 2010
    ISBN9780307749284
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Dogfight, A Love Story

    3.5/5

    19 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Poverty and love join together to form desperation in Alfredo's life. He wants only the best for his beloved Isabel and their unborn child. He wants to have a grand event to celebrate his big brother's release from prison. Unfortunately, on the raw streets of his neighborhood in Queens, Alfredo's wants are not easily satisfied. It seems that everything he tries makes his life worse, but still, he doesn't relent. Matt Burgess has written Alfredo's story at a breakneck pace, populating his life with a crazy cast of characters from across generations, races and ethnicities. In spite of Alfredo's dreary state much of his story is laugh out loud funny.
    • 4/5
      Lyrical, wonderfully authentic prose steers Dogfight, A Love Story. The characters, a delightfully diverse lot, each have their own distinct voice, whether we're listening to Alfredo's constantly-fretting mind, Isabel's down-to-earth daydreaming about "the movie version of her life," or Tariq's interpreting his actions through Qur'anic text. It's the language of Queens, NY, the language of the streets: there's no superfluous moralizing narrative voice that breaks in with high-toned prose to tell us what we should be thinking of the characters and their actions. What we have instead is a group of everyday people, telling their stories.And what a unique-- and somehow "everyman"-- story it is. Alfredo, a small-time drug dealer, is trying to prepare for the homecoming of his brother Tariq, the erstwhile Jose Jr., who has been in prison on a robbery charge. Alfredo lives with his parents and his pregnant girlfriend, Isabel, a part-time video store clerk who was raped at a young age and has developed excellent skills at departing from her body when the situation becomes uncomfortable. Along with his colorful partner in the drug-dealing business, Winston, and a local thug, Alfredo decides to procure some drugs as a welcome-home gift for his brother; this goes disasterously. With the assistance of Jewish bodega owner Max Marshmellow, the idea of adding a dogfight to the homecoming festivites is introduced, and this leads down the path to yet more complications. When Tariq does reenter the picture, we see that trying to reinsert a convict into society (especially a society where it's commonly assumed that one's younger brother ratted you out and got you sent to prison, and one's younger brother is undeniably dating one's ex-girlfriend and is the father of her unborn child) is no easy business.Storyline intertwines with storyline, character overlaps with character, unfortunate coincidences occur, and everyone's in a quagmire in short order. Burgess deftly handles multiple plotlines and multiple viewpoints, and he is excellent at developing even the peripheral characters. The cop Lopez, for example: even though we see him only toward the end of the novel, we have a good idea of what makes him tick, what kind of person he is, what motivates him to take what is perhaps the most decisive action in the book. These people and this county of Queens are fully fleshed out, fully vibrant; everything is rich and alive. Dogfight is a book with a pulse, and you want it to stay alive and kicking until the very last page and beyond.
    • 5/5
      This first-time author proves to be a powerful talent. This is the kind of book that makes you marvel on every page at the writer's talent. The story focuses on a low-level drug dealer, Alfredo, who lives in a small apartment in Queens with his crippled father, mother and pregnant girlfriend. The complication is that his girlfriend use to be his brother's lover. He started the relationship when his brother went to prison, and now the brother is about to be released. A great comic tale and magnificent portrait of the characters who inhabit this world. The climactic scene -- the dogfight -- is a high-wire act of taut writing, with all the plot lines of the novel coming together in one tension-filled critical moment.
    • 4/5
      Lyrical, wonderfully authentic prose steers Dogfight, A Love Story. The characters, a delightfully diverse lot, each have their own distinct voice, whether we're listening to Alfredo's constantly-fretting mind, Isabel's down-to-earth daydreaming about "the movie version of her life," or Tariq's interpreting his actions through Qur'anic text. It's the language of Queens, NY, the language of the streets: there's no superfluous moralizing narrative voice that breaks in with high-toned prose to tell us what we should be thinking of the characters and their actions. What we have instead is a group of everyday people, telling their stories.And what a unique-- and somehow "everyman"-- story it is. Alfredo, a small-time drug dealer, is trying to prepare for the homecoming of his brother Tariq, the erstwhile Jose Jr., who has been in prison on a robbery charge. Alfredo lives with his parents and his pregnant girlfriend, Isabel, a part-time video store clerk who was raped at a young age and has developed excellent skills at departing from her body when the situation becomes uncomfortable. Along with his colorful partner in the drug-dealing business, Winston, and a local thug, Alfredo decides to procure some drugs as a welcome-home gift for his brother; this goes disasterously. With the assistance of Jewish bodega owner Max Marshmellow, the idea of adding a dogfight to the homecoming festivites is introduced, and this leads down the path to yet more complications. When Tariq does reenter the picture, we see that trying to reinsert a convict into society (especially a society where it's commonly assumed that one's younger brother ratted you out and got you sent to prison, and one's younger brother is undeniably dating one's ex-girlfriend and is the father of her unborn child) is no easy business.Storyline intertwines with storyline, character overlaps with character, unfortunate coincidences occur, and everyone's in a quagmire in short order. Burgess deftly handles multiple plotlines and multiple viewpoints, and he is excellent at developing even the peripheral characters. The cop Lopez, for example: even though we see him only toward the end of the novel, we have a good idea of what makes him tick, what kind of person he is, what motivates him to take what is perhaps the most decisive action in the book. These people and this county of Queens are fully fleshed out, fully vibrant; everything is rich and alive. Dogfight is a book with a pulse, and you want it to stay alive and kicking until the very last page and beyond.