After reading two chunkster novels in a row, I'm enjoying some compact novellas. Dolores is nominated for the 2020 Readings prize, and was shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing in the NSW Premier's Awards.

It's a bleak coming of age for the central character Dolores. That's not her real name, it's how the nuns re-name her when they take her into the convent.

Dolores, the nuns had said. It was a name that referred to aches and pains. Our Lady of Sorrows. (p.1)

She was sixteen, and with a mouth full of crooked teeth, when she tried to smile, she looked as though she were being pinched by small, hidden hands. So they named her well: it wasn't her name, but it's what she should have been called.

The convent is in Spain, and Dolores has made her way there from far away in an unnamed place where it is winter in June, to deal with a problem known only to her and to Angelo, the boyfriend that pimped her to his friends and abandoned her when the inevitable happened. The story alternates between her progress at the convent, where the nuns are hoping for new young nuns to take their places as they die off, and back to the months before her arrival when she was newly discovering her sensuality.

The prose is disconcertingly spare and unemotional, which makes it all the more powerful when Dolores finds that it's not only young men who want to exploit her.

Discipline in the convent is strict.

Inside in the convent, on the wall in the dining room, there is a large sign that reads 'Silentium.' The rule is strictly enforced. If necessary, the nuns speak using coded gestures of the hand. They motion for soup or for extra bread. Any unnecessary noise is considered vulgar. The sound of a spoon hitting the side of a bowl. Heavy footsteps in the corridors. The legs of a chair dragged across the floor. Once, when Dolores accidentally slammed the large wooden door on her way into the dining room, some of the nuns dropped to their knees. Pure horror flashed across their faces. It was as if a bomb had fallen from the sky. One nun stood frozen in the middle of the room with her hands covering her ears. (p. 51)

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Dolores is a slim novel but it contains enough feelings and discussion points of an entire series. Plus, it comes with a recommendation from Nell Zink, so how could I refuse this debut from an Australian writer?

Dolores isn’t the main character’s name. It’s kind of a nickname bestowed on her by the nuns who find her collapsed outside their convent. Right away, the reader knows that this story isn’t going to be straightforward. Dolores accepts her new name and gradually falls into the routine of the convent. The days and routines make everything fall into the same kind of rhythm without disruption, but Dolores sees things from the eyes of the outsider. How the food is never enough, even though the nuns chew the soup like it is steak. How the arrival of new postulants or a visit from a priest send the others into a flurry of expectation and activity. How there are undercurrents of favouritism and sex running through the community.

At night, Dolores dreams of home. Home is a country that is never named, but it appears to be the polar opposite of Spain in weather, wealth and Dolores’ behaviour. She dreams of her boyfriend, love hotels and his friends that come with them. She dreams of parties in abandoned hospitals and her cousin Liliana. Why has Dolores come to the convent? Does she know that she is pregnant?

Dolores is heavy with symbolism and juxtapositions between her ‘old’ life and the new. Everything is new, yet strangely the same with parallels between how the nuns act compared to the teenage girls at a party. There is sex, spite and gossip no matter where Dolores is, yet she doesn’t really react to it, accepting it as the norm. Sometimes I was heartbroken at the way Dolores lets herself be used by men, seeking a kind of acceptance from them or just accepting it as the way things are. The ending of the novel is very powerful and leaves Dolores at a junction to rebel or accept. Which will she choose?

Dolores is rich with detail, yet allows the reader to make their own conclusions about the story in a way that never feels frustrating. Lauren Aimee Curtis is an Australian writer to watch, as Dolores does not feel like a debut but a very polished, highly experienced work.

Thank you to Hachette for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

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