Phil the dog
is one of the most admirable and engaging male characters you are
likely to
encounter between the pages of a book this year. His relations with
the
woman who has the good fortune to share his life are handled with exemplary
insight, delicacy, and humor. –J.M. Coetzee
The woman is
clever; the dog is good. All around
there’s the ice and darkness
of a Midwestern
winter, but this complex little fable searches out the signs
of
spring. –Nuala O’Faolain
About the Book
Single, childless, cynical J. T. (Jill) Rosen—a poet and college professor who has failed to realize her early promise—lives a careful, orderly life centered around her work and the little house she has inhabited for years. After a tumultuous youth dedicated to the pursuit of romance, she gave up on the possibility of love. Now, in the Middle Western town this former New Yorker cannot bring herself to call home, she has begun to give up even on the possibility of friendship.
When—almost by accident—Jill adopts a nine-week-old rescue puppy, she finds her routines disrupted and her wistfulness about past loves stirred. But as the days and weeks pass, she forges a connection with the dog that takes her by surprise in her solitary middle age.
With humor and
compassion, Dog illuminates the
possibilities that Jill’s life still offers—for goodness, love, and
grace.
From the Author
I know exactly when and how I began to write Dog—which may not sound surprising, but I can’t pinpoint this moment of invention for anything else I’ve written, and it wouldn’t surprise me if I were never able to do it again.
I’ve never written anything this fast, either. It’s as if once I set out—typed the title and the first line—I couldn’t stop for anything. I just ran to keep up as Dog tugged me along.
What I remember is this: I was walking my daughter Grace’s new puppy. It was midnight, a cold night. The puppy, Molly, was yanking me down the street, and I’d already stumbled a couple of times. It was pitch-dark—there are no streetlights in my neighborhood—and the sidewalks were icy.
I thought, “This dog, this dog, this dog is taking over my life.”
And even though I was tired and cold and feeling put-upon, the thought made me laugh. It was a ridiculous thought. My life had already been taken over. I was Grace’s mother, and I was in the middle of writing a book about being her mother, and I was teaching two classes and volunteering at Grace’s school and trying to keep my house from collapsing into total disorder and doing my best to remember to occasionally say hello to my stoic husband—and I’d had to shove everything over a bit just to make a little room in my life for Molly.
But it struck me that it was not so hard to imagine what it would be like to have a dog take over my life—a different life, the life I might have had. The there-but-for-the-grace-of-God life I would have had, I thought, had I not met my husband, Glen, after living alone for seventeen years; had I not had Grace, who is the center and central fact of my life. It wasn’t hard to imagine how easy it would be for what I’d so crossly thought to be true.
So I went home
and started writing, and Jill and her puppy, Phil, were born.