Praise for Dog

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

Herman writes with great good humor about a puppy invasion on a lonely life.
                                                                     -New York Times Book Review


Herman's spare novella is a haiku of loneliness and human redemption.
                                                                                       -Entertainment Weekly


Dog is a novel for any of us, of whatever age, who have taken a look
at our lives and wondered how we became who we are.
                                                                                                       -Boston Globe



Praise for The Middle of Everything
Honest, brave, and humbling, Michelle Herman's account of striving to become
the mother her child needs...is the story of every woman dedicated to sparing
her child the pain of her own youth. We want to believe that love doesn't
make mistakes, but Michelle Herman knows the truth: like water, love
assumes the shape of the vessel, always imperfect, that holds it.
                                                                                                   -Kathryn Harrison

A poignant, provocative, and painful book about one of life's biggest issues.
It is a gift to find such candor and honesty—and even humor—on this difficult subject.
                                                                                                      -Virginia Quarterly Review


In her engaging new memoir, Michelle Herman notes that memoirs on the job of motherhood
depict it in two ways: grueling, exhausting work coupled with showerlessness and an utter absence
or selfhood or beatific transcendent earth-motherhood, complete with nimbus and attractive housedress.

She imagines “motherhood as feast,” “Motherhood is like riding the flying trapeze...It’s like being shot
out of a cannon... Motherhood as a three-ring circus,” thereby combining the two extremes. Her experiences
with her daughter, both troubled and exhalted, will fascinate parents and would-be parents alike,
and collected, they offer compelling insight into the formative processes that make mothers and children.
                                                                                              - Small Spiral Notebook.
     Italian
More about Dog
What if a person does good by accident? asks narrator Jill.  Herman’s (A New and Glorious Life) poet and college professor heroine leads a solitary life in a nondescript Midwestern city. Never mind a lover, she is so wary and distrustful of others that she doesn’t even pursue even casual friendships with her colleagues. When, on a whim, Jill adopts a beagle puppy whom she names Phil, her personal transformation begins. Jill and Phil take midnight walks when the streets are deserted. Slowly, as Jill grows accustomed to Phil, she confers significance onto the smallest details: the tilt of his head, the look in his eyes, the pitch of his barks, the tug on his leash. Jill realizes a sense of well-being, and ultimately the book is about the lessons Phil teaches Jill about unconditional love, acceptance, loyalty, trust, and companionship. This is a charming, feel-good short novel that borders on being a parable....
[Library Journal]
Read an interview with Michelle Herman about Dog
(and, um, one with Pamela Anderson about her novels) at 
 Conversations With Famous Writers 
Read an article about Michelle Herman and the dog that inspired Dog in Columbus Alive.

...and even more about Dog
More about the The Middle of Everything

Herman brings a poet's flair for precise, evocative language and dramatic structure to the business of writing a memoir.
                                                                                                                        -Literary Mama
An entertaining glimpse into the shared lives of a modern mother and daughter.
                                                                                                                                       -Rain Taxi

Herman writes about the multifaceted experience of parenting with elegance and hard-earned humility. Her memoir first appears to be less about motherhood than about her experience as a daughter and a friend, as she recalls how her mother's depression resulted in her own lonely and isolated childhood, and partly fueled her lifelong quest for perfect friendship and companionship. But the relationship really driving this book is that between Herman and her daughter, Grace, for whom Herman vowed to be "the mother to end all mothers." Herman has a restless mind; she's constantly analyzing every aspect of her relationships with other adults, but somehow overlooks the ways in which her total devotion to Grace and her efforts to "meet [her] every need" would contribute to Grace's inability to individuate from her mother, and lead to a psychological breakdown at age six. With professional help and therapy, Grace emerges from that crisis, but Herman's writing about that period and how her own actions and history contributed to it is poignant and enlightening. "That sometimes... mothers and their children's needs will be at odds with each other in ways that aren't in the least apparent" strikes Herman, an obviously devoted, insightful and intelligent mother, as a complete surprise, for many reasons rendered clear by the end of this memoir.
[Publishers Weekly]

 Read an excerpt in the webzine Literary Mama. 
Read an interview with Michelle Herman at collectedmiscellany.com: Part I and Part II