Like a Dog: City Lights/Sister Spit

A scrappy young skateboarder's story of underground worlds and fringe existences, confusing family relationships and the struggle for intimacy.

"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 alienating: a brutal fact of her stark realism that brings both laughter and tears."--Karen Tongson, author of Relocations: 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