A tender, charming portrait of a consummate canine connoisseur.
The first truly personal story from Coren (Psychology/Univ. of British Columbia; The Modern Dog: How Dogs Have Changed People and Society and Improved Our Lives, 2009, etc.), an expert on human-dog interaction.
The author’s previous books have addressed how man’s best friend thinks, behaves, speaks and interprets, and why humans love them so much. This memoir follows suit with charming biographical history of his youth enriched by a variety of pets, all of whom played a large part in his emotional development. Though he’d been bitten by dogs before—and endured the painful rabies treatment required—his affinity for canines continued to prosper. Even as his psychology career began to dominate his free time, Coren remained dedicated to the dogs in his life. His training as a researcher, psychologist and dog enthusiast “unlocked for me a way of looking at canine behavior and human relationships with dogs.” The author’s early history soon yields to life with Joan, a mature, married student from one of his evening university psychology classes in Vancouver. As her abusive marriage dissolved and her romance with the author simmered, Joan, recognizing his love of dogs, purchased an oversized Cairn terrier resembling “a jumbo version of Toto.” As the “canine whirlwind” named Flint began the bonding process, Coren foreshadows an increasingly volatile relationship between Joan and the “effervescent” pet, who became more of an irritant than a companion to her, even after her marriage to the author. Coren notes that Flint’s particular terrier breed is notorious for disobedience, but the dog seemed amenable to the trial-and-error processes of house-training, socialization, obedience, “scent discrimination” and an exuberant stint on the dog-show circuit. Eventually, the author adopted and trained a new spaniel puppy, Wizard, who buffered Joan’s middle-aged angst and soothed the author's grief as Flint succumbed to old age.
A tender, charming portrait of a consummate canine connoisseur.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8920-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
