It Started With a Dog

In the second installment of a cheerful romcom series, love percolates amidst the competition of two Austin, Texas coffee shops.

Julia London’s second installment of her cheerful romcom series is set in Austin, Tx., during the Christmas season. She cleverly brings together two 30something dog lovers with personalities and agendas as different as caffeinated versus decaffeinated coffee.

 

Aeronautical Engineer, Jonah Rogers, leaves his job to help out at the ‘Lucky Star,’ a charmingly humble--however lagging--coffee shop run by his parents, his aunt and uncle. With his father ill, Jonah--reliable and devoted, sacrificing and loyal--steps in to assist the long-standing family business that offers no frills, old-school coffee and desserts. Matters are complicated when he accidentally swaps his phone with Chicagoan, Harper Thompson, in town to launch ‘Deja Brew’—a trendy, two-story coffee house accented with gleaming chrome coffee makers, which serves upscale coffee and vegan food choices. The driven, only-child overachiever is up for a promotion riding on the success of ‘Deja Brew.’ However, can she contend with ‘Lucky Star,’ a local fixture in town, and a ‘Starbucks’ situated in the very same neighborhood?

 

Along the way, Jonah and Harper and their swapped phones lead them to romance as they discover they are business rivals. The ante is upped when a local dog competition, “King Mutt,” pits the couple--the lovable three-legged Dachshund mascot of ‘Lucky Star’ versus Harper’s mean old bulldog--against each other, as well.

 

A perfect blend of coffee, dogs and romance permeates London’s (You Lucky Dog, Charmer in Chaps) frothy romcom that will leave readers thirsty for a third helping in this sweet, enjoyable series.

 

It Started with a Dog (Book 2: Lucky Dog series) by Julia London

Berkley (Penguin Books), $16.00 paperback, 9780593100400, 320 pages

Publication Date: September 28, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 2, 2021), link HERE

Sigrid Nunez: A Love Letter

The Writers Life

Photo by Marion Ettinger

Sigrid Nunez is the author of seven books and many short stories and essays, and she teaches writing. She's received a Whiting Award, the Rome Prize in Literature and a Berlin Prize fellowship. In Sempre Susan, Nunez wrote a revealing memoir about Susan Sontag, an American writer, filmmaker, teacher and political activist who played a significant role in Nunez's personal and professional life. In her new novel, The Friend (see my review below), Nunez explores the bond between a grief-stricken woman and a dog she reluctantly agrees to foster after the death of her mentor and friend.

Suicide, writing and dogs form the basis of this novel.

Yes, in recent years I happened to learn that a number of people I knew had been obsessing about suicide. Not that they were actually planning to do it, but it seemed to be always on their minds. And in fact, very sadly, one of those people has since taken his own life. So that was one very important thread. Another thread was my work as a writing teacher and the idea of literary mentorship. And then I've always been interested in human-animal companionship. I saw a way to explore all these subjects in one novel.

Did you know from the start that a dog--Apollo--would be the cornerstone of The Friend?

I can't remember exactly at what point Apollo became such an important part of the story, but he's based on dogs I've known in real life.

What's been your experience with dogs?

I've always loved dogs. It was one of the great "unhappinesses" of my childhood that we lived in a place where no dogs were allowed. Later, around the time I went to college, my family had a Great Dane, and I had a dog whose sire was a Great Dane when I was in my 20s.

Is your history with Great Danes why you chose to create Apollo as a Harlequin Great Dane in the novel?

I was drawn to the idea of an exceptionally large and visually striking animal.

Many of your novels are written in a very intimate, first-person point of view. Do you find it easier, more accessible, to write in this voice?

It's not really a question of what's easier or more accessible but rather which point of view best suits a particular story. In The Friend, for example, from the beginning I knew I wanted an intimate, first-person voice. To be more precise, I wanted the narrative to sound like a letter, and not just any letter but a love letter. That was the tone I was going for: intimate, hushed, urgent. 

An unnamed speaker narrates The Friend. And many other characters are also unnamed. Why?

To name or not to name a fictional character isn't a choice that I make beforehand. It's something intuitive that comes with the writing. In writing The Friend, any time I thought about inventing a name for a human character it struck a false note, and I was immediately compelled to get rid of it.

The Friend is rooted in the challenges of a writer's life. There's a quote in the book: "Some would say that, after all, the one sure way for an artist to know his work had failed was if everyone 'got' it." What's your feeling about this idea?

I would say that if everyone likes and approves of a certain work, it can't be very interesting. Oscar Wilde was right: "Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself."

How did writing The Friend differ from writing Sempre Susan?

In many ways, writing the memoir was easier than writing the novel for the simple reason that I didn't have to invent anything. I already had the story and the characters. But in other ways the process was much the same: a struggle to find the right words and the right order of words to make the narrative as effective as possible.

Your novels are unified by themes of death and grief and an inherent lack of understanding between people, yet a sincere need for protagonists to try to understand people and circumstances anyway. What draws you to these ideas and why?

These are some of the most important aspects of human experience, matters that touch us all. It seems to me only natural that this would be the material a novelist would want to grapple with and that people would want to read about.

If you could not be a writer and/or teacher of writing, what career path would you choose?

This is something I touch on in The Friend. My love for animals has always been very strong. I love all animals and am fascinated by animal behavior. I may very well have missed my true calling. I often wish I had pursued some career that had to do with the study, care or training of animals. I think I would have found much fulfillment in such work.

What can readers expect from you next?

I'm about 50 pages into a new novel, which has a narrative voice very similar to that of The Friend.

Will the new novel include another dog?

No. No animals this time--at least, not yet.

This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness for Readers (2/2/18), link HERE 

The Friend

A writer who lives in isolation takes in her deceased mentor's dog, and the two of them come to grips with death and loss--and each other.

Sigrid Nunez (Sempre Susan) has not graced the literary world with a novel in almost a decade--but the wait has surely been worth it. In The Friend, she takes readers on a reflective journey through a labyrinth of grief, loss and loneliness. This meditative, beautifully written novel reads as intimately as a memoir. It is narrated by a sensitive intellectual, an unnamed woman--a writer and teacher--who lives an isolated life in a tiny, barely 500-square-foot, rent-controlled New York City apartment.

The suicide of her mentor--a writer and teacher, one of the narrator's closest and oldest friends--forces her to grapple with the role he played in her life, the meaning of his life and death, as well as her own existence in the world. When she is ultimately asked to take in the deceased's dog--a 180-pound Harlequin Great Dane named Apollo--she is reluctant. The narrator lives alone and works mostly at home. Although she prefers cats, the affection and devotion her mentor had for Apollo sways her decision. Despite her building not allowing pets, she agrees to take the dog temporarily. His entrance adds a new dimension to the landscape of loss, as he mourns his master in his own way. But, as the narrator says, "You cannot explain death to a dog."

The pain of the narrator's bereavement is dealt with through remembering and writing. But the bond she forms with the dog--how they adapt to each other and a world darkened by an aching void--forges this thought-provoking, philosophical story. Ultimately, The Friend ponders the meanings of loyalty, love, friendship and a buoyant creative spirit. --

The Friend: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez

Riverhead Books/Penguin, $25.00 Hardcover,  9780735219441, 224  pages

Publication Date: February 6, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (February 2, 2018), link HERE

Invisible Ellen

Well-drawn characterizations and a compelling opening launch Invisible Ellen, a unique story of friendship by actress/writer Shari Shattuck. The book begins with an intriguing description of Ellen Homes, a 24 year-old, 273 pound, socially-awkward woman who shares a low-income, one-room apartment—and a "love of caloric excess," namely in the form of bacon—with her cat named Mouse. Ellen was once a product of the foster care system, where she was either taunted or ignored due to a prominent scar on her face and her left eye, halfway closed, which limits her vision. Ellen's background, along with her physical deformity, encourages her to espouse evasive techniques of anonymity to accommodate her limitations and cultivate her reclusiveness. But one afternoon, a young, blind woman boards the same bus that Ellen takes to her job cleaning at a Costco store, and Ellen instinctively intervenes to save the stranger from being mugged. Ellen's once-manageable, invisible life—spent quietly observing, from a distance, her struggling, also afflicted neighbors and co-workers, namely a troubled, pregnant woman and a drug dealer—is suddenly upended by the incident. In an ironic twist, the blind woman named Temerity takes an interest in Ellen and after more than six years of isolation, offers Ellen friendship—along with the motivation to more fully participate in life and courageously help others, regardless of complications.

Shattuck (Legacy) has written an upbeat, entertaining survival story about the souls of lost human beings often ignored by society and shows how lives can be profoundly transformed through unlikely human connections.

Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck

Putnam Adult, $26.95 Hardcover, 9780399167614, 304 pp

Publication Date: May 29, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/5/14), click HERE