An entertaining send-up of the most annoying traits of animals and humans.
A dog sues her owners for not taking her for a walk in Hines’ winsome comic novel.
In an exaggerated version of California, where animals have most of the privileges—and jobs—that humans do, a golden retriever named Velvet files a lawsuit against her owners, Albert and Marietta Sweeney, of Pomona, California, and their kids, Billy and Becky, for denying her “life, liberty, and pursuing happiness” under the California Animal Humanities Act. She specifically complains that the family has failed to take her for a walk for 17 straight days while she languished in the fenced-in yard and developed joint pain. Velvet’s lawyer, a slick cat named Bogart, thinks her case will be a landmark decision for pets’ rights, and also greedily reckons that “he could get about ten million in the settlement of Velvet’s suit and persuade Velvet to take her million” (Bogart’s lawsuit is also a criminal prosecution—why not?—that could send Albert to jail for years). Albert’s attorney, a pig named Winston, thinks he has an equally solid defense: Albert says Billy and Becky faithfully walked Velvet a mile each day during the period in question, and he has the dog-walking logs to prove it. The stage is set for a courtroom showdown before judge Julius Fox and a jury of kangaroos and porcupines, replete with lawyerly histrionics: “Isn’t it true, Mr. Scott, that you are not only the president of the Save the Snail Foundation but also its only member...[a]nd that in Oklahoma, where you last lived, you had been the president and sole member of the Save the Snake Foundation, and that you are wanted in that state for receiving money without doing anything for it?” The tide starts to turn against Albert when a string of witnesses swear they didn’t see Velvet out for her walks during the 17 days, with the most damning testimony coming from the Sweeney’s sinister cat, Lothar.
While ostensibly about animals’ struggles against human neglect and abuse, Hines’ tale is equally an exploration of the many ways in which animals inconvenience, irritate, and endanger humans—especially Albert, who struggles to preserve his property and finances from destruction by Velvet’s dogged boisterousness. The author relates these depredations in droll, deadpan prose, both from the shell-shocked human viewpoint (“Tore right ankle on run with Velvet,” notes Billy in a typical dog-walking log entry. “She pulled me over stones in the ditch. Got nose scratched on wire fence. I just love these times”) and the ebullient canine perspective (“[T]he chewing was just great, and I had a great desire to chew: window sills, chair legs, shoes, and socks,” Velvet recalls of her time living in the Sweeney house before she was exiled to the back yard. “Yet for some reason the Sweeneys seemed to have an equally great desire that I not chew.” The spoof of legal jousting is breezy and sharp-witted. (“[N]ote that the kangaroos have such small heads there can’t be much in them,” observes Winston. “We have ended up with a very good jury indeed.”) Color photographs of the non-hominid species in the text will remind readers how funny animals can look; fauna skeptics can enjoy Hines’s saga as much as animal lovers do.
An entertaining send-up of the most annoying traits of animals and humans.Pub Date: June 5, 2023
ISBN: 9798395944511
Page Count: 102
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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