Though a little on the somber side, a charming assortment of stories that give the species the respect it deserves.
An entertaining pack of canine-themed short stories ranging from the 19th century to the present day.
In assembling the 20 stories in this collection, editor Tesdell takes pains to avoid the hoariest doggie clichés—no Marley-ish melodrama or Lassie-like derring-do here. But even the most serious authors seem to employ dogs for a narrow range of literary purposes, usually as a way to amplify human foibles. In Jonathan Lethem’s “Ava’s Apartment” (an excerpt from his 2009 novel, Chronic City), a three-legged dog mirrors the emotional incompleteness of the story’s protagonist, a dissolute rock critic. P.G. Wodehouse’s hilarious “The Mixer” is narrated by a dog caught up in a hamfisted burglary scheme that’s upended by his sense of loyalty and generosity. And the dog walker in Lydia Millet's “Sir Henry” is befuddled by simple human interactions, so smitten is he with the moral purity of his charges. The dogs are rarely menacing—though stories from Patricia Highsmith and Ray Bradbury take gruesome turns—but in Tesdell’s hands, dogs and melancholy tend to be close companions. That’s most pronounced in Doris Lessing’s “The Story of Two Dogs,” in which the relationship between two farm dogs declines in relation to the affection they receive, and it’s also apparent in the dialogue a widower has with his companion in Tobias Wolff's “Her Dog,” and in the funereal hunting trip Thomas McGuane describes in “Flight.” This anthology isn’t a persistent downer, but the comic pieces are slightly less common: In addition to the Wodehouse tale, the collection includes a James Thurber classic, “Josephine Has Her Day,” a study in dog-owner loyalty, Anton Chekhov’s “Kashtanka,” in which a dog runs off with the circus, and best of all Mark Twain’s “A Dog’s Tale,” in which a dog’s feat of heroism reveals the foolishness of the pet's owners. Alas, the most recent of that batch of stories was published in the 1920s, suggesting that the funny dog story may simply be a thing of the past.
Though a little on the somber side, a charming assortment of stories that give the species the respect it deserves.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-59397-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Everyman’s Library
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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