I can see that this book will find an audience. It's beautifully written as to word choice and arrangement. But, I just couldn't get very fast into it. I'll rate it higher than I liked simply because I can see it's potential. It's about a strange little family. A single mom, her son, her brother who she finds suddenly dead, and his seemingly mentally unstable girlfriend. And a dog who evidently does get set on fire. Just didn't get that far.

I struggled with this book at first, it felt very abstract. But as it went on I found I couldn't put it down and needed to keep reading to see what would happen. It is short, but felt dense. The perspective shifts were a bit jarring, without any indication of who was telling the story. Luckily there were only 2 perspectives. I did get used to it though and I think it emphasized the point that both characters were grieving and struggling, and more similar than they realized or wanted to admit. Not my favorite book, but I'm glad I finished it.

Reading this book was a unique experience and I felt that I had to have time to digest my fleeting thoughts. Very well written and you won’t be able to look away.
Many thanks to University of Nebraska and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a weird story about the dynamics of relationships. Unfortunately, Dog On Fire is not a good match for me personally. I thank NetGalley for the Advance Reader Copy in exchange for my honest review.

I started this one thinking it would be a quick read, only 200 pages, the description sounded interesting. Unfortunately I had a really hard time following this one.

I got the main storyline, but I don’t know if it was the ARC, but there were very few paragraph breaks, like no chapters, a lot of run ons, tangents, it was hard to keep track of what was going on. I had a hard time focusing because things seem to trail off.

I sort of got the feeling this is one of those novels they’d make into an indie film that would get nominated for a bunch of Oscars, like maybe I just didn’t understand something that was actually really profound.

This book just wasn’t for me, but if you’re looking for something short that’s a little different, this could be the read for you!

I tried. I really tried, but ultimately couldn't finish. The mid-paragraph no-warning perspective shifts were too abrupt, too jarring, and the narrative wasn't interesting enough to keep going.

My thanks to NetGalley and University of Nebraska Press for the ARC.

What remarkable writing. This novel slides past the literal and hits straight in the middle of visceral sense experience. I wasn't always sure what was going on--the writing is like a furious fever dream of sense impression--but I was led forward by a faith that any writer who can craft words this close to the bone, this free of artifice or expectation, is a writer worth following.

In terms of content Dogs on Fire has nothing whatsoever to do with the book it reminded me of most--that would be Malina by Ingeborg Bachman. I'm not sure if that comparison is defensible, the two are so different in tone and intent. But each of these books worked in a way where the primary reading experience was one of intense emotion, of being alive, of feeling one moment spearheading itself violently into the next one as I read along. The experience of reading this novel left me feeling exhausted and befuddled and abused and exalted and purified and joyful. Full disclosure: my impressions may be partly due to last night's insomnia that had me staying up to read this novel. But so it goes. A book comes to us where we are in that moment and speaks to us in that moment. Writing, and reading, can include so many experiences beyond the superficial meanings of words on a page. I enjoyed the plunge. I read it straight through and now I'm going to read it again. As in, right now, here I go.

Mixed on this book- applaud the experimental style (jumping between different forms of narration), but did not find the plot interesting nor did I care about the characters. It’s a novel that explores sibling relationships and small town living and pain but it gets to be very heavy and depressing at times. Do not know who I recommend this to, but I’m sure there are many who will enjoy this due to the themes, setting, or narrative structure.

Thanks to the publisher for the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book just wasn’t for me. I didn’t care for the writing style (jumping back & forth between first & third person with no indication when the change was happening). I wasn’t invested in the characters or the plot & ended up DNF-ing the book.

I like how the author was writing and then he'd go in the past tense with a different style of fart. This book had a lot of different angles and themes for a small town everybody seemed to have a problem. Father it was just to eat which day home and he was getting really old and his son was taking care of everything. His son was living with them and the father because he got divorced. His mother An alcoholic and she like to just take off and leave for rehab and she had problems. His older brother dies in the book and he had a really interesting history too. He had epileptic and everything he did and life just seemed not to work out for him. He died by location. His brother found all these interesting things after he died like he went to Vegas he was in the military he didn't never knew any of this. His son was always picked on by the wealthy children in this town. You've one of these boys because they had a car on fire I was trying to blame him. The girlfriend APHRA was another whole different category too she would just ride around town in her car called spots she had a very desponsional family life as well. She loved his brother apparently they have problems and she could not get over his depth. She started to harass his son everywhere she went so the cops had to get involved. They had a thing about green jello and they talked about this at length because they tried to eat it his brother had tons of it in his house. The father eventually had to get lawyers because they were trying to frame him for the fires in the car because he thought he saw a dog. There is a lot of interesting phenomenas in this book how it all tied together in the end and it was pretty amazing

I received a complimentary electronic ARC of this incredible novel from Netgalley, Author Terese Svoboda, and publisher, the University of Nebraska Press. I have read Dog on Fire of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to add her to my favorite authors and recommend Terese Svoboda to friends and family. She writes an intense tale - I had to take breaks - that will keep you enthralled.

WOW. What a ride.

This book is too sad. Probably because I could relate to so much in it. How much do we really know about our sibling’s real lives? Why is it so hard to look straight on at the damage our parents inadvertently do to us? Who’s in charge of spreading small town information? What is the formula for raising strong, independent sons who aren’t bullies and small time criminals? Finally, when will stop thinking about this book I didn’t even like?

Although the characters and overall writing were great, but this was a case of an arc suffering from poor e-design, making for a distracting read.

There's a lot going on in this book.  There's a bit of a mystery, two dysfunctional families, two point of view,, an alcoholic, a child abuse victim, teenage vandals, corrupt cops and an ambiguous ending. Oh yeah, and the dog.

In the end, this really is an exploration of guilt.  A sister trying to come to grips with the feeling her brother died because she didn't do enough and a girlfriend who thinks she did too much.

Dog on Fire
By Terese Svoboda

This is a weird story about the dynamics of relationships. The narrator is a forty-ish divorced woman who has moved back home to her parents' small farm with her teenaged son. Her brother – eleven months her junior – is dead.

The tale revolves around her relationship with her brother. He suffered from seizures since early childhood, and is therefore shunned by his peers – and is a source of embarrassment to his older sister. So she has always turned her back on him.

There is one person – a woman named Aphra who weights close to 300 pounds – who formed a bond with the brother over the years and who became his lover. Now that he is dead, she has transferred her attentions to his family, most notably to his nephew who closely resembles him.

There is some question as to the brother's cause of death, and both the sister and the lover are seeking answers. Their interactions throughout the book revolve around what happened to the brother and the sister's mixed feelings about her treatment of him. The chapters alternate between the sister's first person narrative and Aphra's.

Two things stand out to me in this book. First is the fact that most of the characters – except for Aphra - are never named. Second is exactly what is the author conveying in the episode of the "Dog on Fire"?

The book held my interest enough to finish it – although I am really not sure what point the author was trying to make.

Dog on fire is like watching one of those abstract day in the life type indie films that end by cutting to black in the middle of a scene. It leaves you with the same raw sense of realism that can only come from capturing something so emotional yet so mundane. The prose is arid and reflects the landscape around which the whole story centers. The narrator is a divorced single mother who has moved back home after fleeing her abusive relationship with her husband. She has returned to an emotionally detached father, an alcoholic mother who believes her children ruined her life, and a brother who has just recently passed away. She spends most of the book coming to terms with her relationship to her brother prior to his passing while hunting for clues as to why he died. The second less involved narrator is Apha, the brother's obese girlfriend, who is also trying to come to terms with the loss in increasingly strange ways. The sister comes off as rude and self centered; while the girlfriend comes across as broken and overflowing with the emotion the town seems to lack. And yes, there is a dog on fire in this book. Overall this book captures the mourning process of individuals in a small farming town with honesty that borders on absurd. The book is not a light fluffy read but I can tell that those who are attracted to this book will get the sense of walking in someone else's shoes, even if the shoes are on a temporarily dark path.

thank you for the advanced copy!

whatta lil fever dream of a book !! i found the writing style super unique and vivid but a bit hard to get into and eventually threw in the towel - DNF at about 50%. i feel like if it was a lil more cleaned up i'd actually really enjoy it - the premise itself was very interesting to me and there were elements about the way the story unfolded that i quite liked. i'm sure there is a fanbase for books written like this, just wasn't for me, no matter how bad i wanted it to be. 3 stars.

Dog on Fire is a quirky, beautifully written novel. Warning to those sensitive to animal cruelty - the dog in the title actually is on fire, a vivd and disturbing image that is difficult to forget. The book suffers from a lack of editing - there are some places where the pace gets bogged down with too much meandering, and the lack of quotation marks, or any indication that the narrator/speaker has changed is both annoying and jarring, when the reader has to adjust to a new point of view being thrust upon them, sometimes in the middle of a paragraph. There are big themes here, and there is a story hidden inside the trying-too-hard oddness of the writing. The author would have been better served letting the two main characters tell their own stories, in their own voices, in a way that allowed the quirkiness to enhance the story, not overwhelm it - but, the weird images of aliens and a kitchen stuffed with packages of green Jell-O, a dark night made dream-like by lingering smoke, two women digging up a grave - are dream-like, strange, and haunting enough to make a real impression on the reader. This one is hard to categorize and hard to critique - the writing is lush and inventive and much of this story stays with you long after the last page is turned.

Honestly, I had a difficult time getting past the first sentence much less the entire book!.

The story starts out with what is possibly the longest run on sentence in the history of run on sentences.

It goes downhill from there.

The sentence structure is convoluted, the plot difficult to discern at best…

Perhaps this book was simply not to my taste, but I confess I wound up not finishing.

Wow, this is a tour de force of stream-of-consciousness writing in multiple voices, all full of idiosyncrasies and ideas and personas. It's a bit of a wild ride, honestly, and while I didn't really enjoy reading it, it does offer a unique take on poverty and desperation and sexuality and life in small and sad places.