Some stories close in tight, forsaking expansiveness for the grip of a chokehold. All Them Dogs belongs to that intense space where every street feels crowded, every room a size too small, and every breath too hot and sour on the skin.
The novel follows Tony, a troubled man recently returned to Dublin after a few years abroad. Unable to escape the past—especially the memory of a complex love and the crime that spurred his flight—he steps back into the fragile world of gangs, where loyalty shifts without warning and heartache strikes like a sudden fist.
In the company of Flute—beautiful, unpredictable, and dangerous—he moves through errands that spare nothing of himself, every corner alive with risk.
Experiencing Tony's life so closely underscores the novel's compression. White shapes a tight, close-quartered world from grime, social codes, and language, the last of which is especially striking.
Dense with street slang and bristling thoughts, the vernacular presses us into smoke-filled kitchens, across collapsing car seats, and against frayed tempers until the tension feels skin-tight.
As inevitably as sweat pressed between bodies, conflict coils around Tony: priorities grind against alliances, secrets burst bubbles of solace, desire erodes danger, and parenthood stands in uneasy opposition to youthful volatility.
Yet within a landscape that buries growth deep, change still claws its way through him.
In a world of relentless pressure, violence is constant, but Tony's encounters with it prod at a rage he can no longer summon by will alone. Even betrayal and heartbreak, when they find him, fail to restore the world to the stark contrast of black and white.
This renders moral judgment complex, if not impossible. Tony isn't the most likable protagonist, but he’s a product of a way of living that has worn itself into him. That bruise-like tenderness is felt throughout.
He also harbors no illusions about himself. Survival remains his imperative, stripping him down to something raw and instinctive: an exposed nerve, an animal driven by hunger and fear.
His brusqueness is as much a shield as it is a scar, the latter carved into him by hands once capable of gentle touch.
In this way, White gathers reality into a taut bundle and leaves it with us. How we bear its oppressive immediacy becomes part of the act of reading, making All Them Dogs not just observed, but inhabited.
As we quickly learn, emotion has no clear path. It’s bottled and pressed inward until all sensation dulls. The impulses twisting deep prove fatal. And yet, life in this world exists almost entirely on the surface—an electric state of being that burns out fast.
Feeling never runs deep enough to resist the slick glide of a blade through flesh; pain is white-hot but too quick to draw out torment. When bodies fall, they do so without ceremony, emptied of both presence and purpose.
The result is a consuming novel, albeit one that doesn't seem preoccupied with leaving a lasting wound. Its force lies elsewhere—in the precision with which it draws us into its grip, and the unease it leaves once we surface.
In this way, All Them Dogs feels less like a chronicle of gang life—though its portrayal is unflinching—than an anatomy of futility. Every act of brutality and shifting coalition circles back on itself, blind and insatiable.
The players keep moving across the same stage, holding themselves close to the edge because the drop is the only place where the blood runs hot.
White captures this with a clarity that sharpens the novel’s impact: the understanding that the performance is endless and applause never expected—only the next cue.
An advance copy was provided by Riverhead Books.
Mood Meter
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Genres
LGBTQ+
Mystery & Thrillers
Publication Date
May 19, 2026