Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Agnes and the Hitman, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer

One of the first things I did when sitting down to write this review was to visit Amazon.com and see if Crusie and Mayer have another book in the works. Great news: they do, to be issued next year! Now, do you really have to ask if I liked this one, their second effort together?

I’ve already reviewed their first collaboration, Don’t Look Down, which I really liked. But that book felt to me like they were trading chapters or segments of chapters instead of writing the book together. Agnes and the Hitman, on the other hand, reads like it was written by two people sitting side-by-side at the same computer. On her own, Crusie writes highly irreverent and hysterically funny romance novels with a mystery or problem-solving element that keeps slamming the two protagonists together in spite of themselves. Bob Mayer writes thrillers and adventure novels. And together, they are an inspired partnership in which Mayer’s fast pacing and aura of imminent danger and pacing adds urgency and heat to Crusie’s hilarious, passionate, and initially reluctant lovers.

So, what’s this book about, anyway? Agnes Crandall is a struggling chef and caterer who has staked her entire reputation and net worth on pulling off a wedding that the mother-of-the-bride seems intent on sabotaging. Enter the Mafia-equivalents and Shane, the hitman. While trying to sort the various heroes and villains from among her friends, acquaintances, and business associates, Agnes falls for Shane, Shane falls for Agnes, an alleged $5 million fortune may or may not be in the basement, the wedding is imperiled, a bridge gives out, and someone tries to kidnap Agnes’s dog, Rhett. And that’s just the outline. Sample passage: “…being shot at by a strange man shortly after having angry sex, shortly after having tried to kill your fiance, shortly after having a dognapper point a gun at you was a bad night for anybody, even a woman as tough as Agnes.” Read this book — you’ll love it.

About Rhett: the purpose of this blog is to steer people away from books in which horrible things happen to animals and towards books in which animals are treated well. So, spoilerish though it may be to say so under normal circumstances, I must say that Rhett comes to no harm. He’s fine. The kidnapper says on page 6, “I wouldn’t kill no dog,” and he doesn’t. Rhett does have some interesting little adventures, but he mostly sleeps. In other words, he’s a dog. There are also flamingoes, which go bonkers when isolated from their kind. Flocking birds need to be in a flock. Rest assured that any flamingo isolation is temporary, however. There’s also an alligator, briefly. I am happily declaring this book SAFE for animal lovers. Enjoy!

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, by Kate Atkinson

My friend Dana gave me this book, saying it was “depressing” and adding that you have to read the last 10-15 pages for it to all come together. I’m going to disagree with Dana this time – for me, Ruby, the chirpy, young narrator, single-handedly keeps Behind the Scenes at the Museum from being depressing. I found a lot of comedy in this book despite the sad and tragic moments, and Ruby is one of the most endearing characters I’ve ever encountered. This is a well-told, intriguing tale of a young girl trying to find out just who she is and how her family history has molded herself and those around her. Her personal history is the Museum of the title, and it’s overflowing. The various mysteries of the book are all eventually explained, but if you are one of these people who can’t stand not knowing, go ahead and flip to the end. I’ll just recommend that you delay that for as long as you possibly can. I made it about halfway through the book before I succumbed.

Descended from a long line of unloved daughters who became bitter, unloving mothers, Ruby has a bitter, unloving mother of her own, Bunty. And Bunty was raised by the bitter and unloving Nell, who was raised by the bitter and unloving Rachel despite being the biological daughter of sad Alicia. These women and their sisters fall for the wrong men, bear children in and out of wedlock, and otherwise live grim, despairing lives. Except … each has a chance to for better, or at least different, lives. That chance is often squandered or snatched away from them in a moment. Sometimes, that moment involves a war. Sometimes, things just go wrong because life is messy. Ruby’s valiant effort to make some sense of life’s messiness and break the pattern, despite some danger of falling into it herself, is only a small part of the plot.

There are mysteries, as I noted above, most of which involve Ruby and her sisters. When your narrator begins with her own conception and doesn’t go much beyond her 16^th birthday, the perspective can be skewed. In Ruby’s case, it’s very skewed. Yet she remains ever the optimist, believing that she is lovable despite the many cold shoulders she encounters at home. I, for one, love Ruby. And it becomes clear that Bunty, a miserable wretch of a mother, has some fight in her, too.

Did I mention that this book is set in the UK? And that Kate Atkinson is possibly the first British author I’ve ever read who didn’t mention London?

 Anyway, I am very sad to say that this book is UNSAFE for animal lovers. There are lots of animal deaths. One of the male characters is in charge of dog messengers used on the front lines in WWI, for example. His experiences are extremely sad and disturbing. Ruby’s family lives upstairs from a pet shop. That’s also extremely sad. Bunty does something vile to a pet (who ends up being rescued). And there are other incidents. If it really disturbs you to read about bad things happening to animals, you don’t want to read this book. Otherwise, if you can get past that, I’m recommending it.

Goldilocks and the Three Cousins — Vacation Part Two: Utah and Idaho

Some family history for context: Mom’s younger brother, Ross, married his high school sweetheart, Joyce, when they were both 18. This was back in the 1950s, when such things were closer to the norm. After a few years, Ross and Joyce had a baby, then moved from their hometown in Illinois to Colorado, where they had two more babies. Then they moved to Idaho, the kids grew up, Ross tragically died of cancer in his late 40s, Joyce remarried a nice guy named Sam, the kids married, at least one of the kids divorced and remarried, they all converted from Catholicism to Mormonism, they all had a bunch of children, two now have grandchildren or step-grandchildren, and they all stayed in Idaho. The last I saw of them was in Colorado, when we were all children. Mom stayed in touch with Joyce, however, so when we began planning this trip, a visit to Joyce, Sam, and the Idaho cousins became part of the itinerary.

I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down. I even fretted about it, because I that’s one of the things I do best — fret. But realistically, I figured we’d end up somewhere between a disaster and a fairy tale. It was closer to a fairy tale: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, to be specific. Cousin #1 was too perfect, Cousin #2 was too … something, and Cousin #3 was just right! The cousins are aligned by the order in which we visited them, which is not birth order.

However, first we visited Joyce and Sam. As you may recall from the previous post, Dave and I arrived hellishly late and Joyce had to meet Mom at the airport. So they had a nice morning reconnecting and talking about my late Uncle Ross and bonding and all that, while Dave and I tried to recover from our travel ordeal. We then drove from Salt Lake City to Sam and Joyce’s home close to the Utah/Idaho border, and officially began the “visiting relatives” portion of the trip. I can’t say enough good things about Sam and Joyce as hosts. They were wonderfully generous and cordial. Sam is incredibly easy to get along with, and Joyce fell all over herself trying to make us feel at home.

Then it was off to visit Cousin #1 in Idaho Falls. I have pictures, but there were major camera issues during this trip and so I do not have access to those pictures yet. They’ll be posted eventually, although I don’t post pictures of minor children, so it will just be the adults. So why did I deem Cousin #1 “too perfect”? That’s said with quite a bit of admiration, but also a sense that he’s not someone I’d hang out with if we lived in the same city. Different styles, different values, different modes of being. He’s a good guy, I like his wife, I’m sure the 5 boys — 4 of whom are 8 or younger — will grow up to be delightful young men, etc., etc. But really, their house is astonishingly neat and clean with no household help and all those children. This is mind-boggling. There’s a lot of regimentation in their home, which I suppose is necessary with that many children. Also, Cousin #1 gets Masters degrees as a sort of hobby, and his wife takes Serious Classes. I admire this to no end. They are like Vulcans. And I am no Vulcan. We had a lovely visit, we ate pizza, and I left hoping that one of the other two cousins would be from my planet.

Cousin #2 is from my planet, but we don’t speak the same language. We visited her the next day. She lives in a modular home (used to be called trailers, but they really are modular homes) on a vast ranch with her husband and a few of their children. Two of her sons live in a house that the rest of the family abandoned due to sewer issues, but they come by each night for dinner. And a married daughter with children lives a short distance away. There are many dogs, some of which are “indoor” dogs and some of which are “outdoor” dogs. The younger daughter is 18 and in a 2-year program that will give her some kind of certificate deeming her beyond great with horses. She loves it, and hopes to work on a dude ranch some day handling the horses, possibly in Colorado. Dave and I liked her best, which seemed to throw her because she apparently gets lost in the shuffle and has been reportedly quite active doing the teenage-rebellion thing against her parents. Anyway, I asked her how many horses her immediate family owns, and it’s something like 20. But each horse is owned by an individual instead of there being “family horses.” So her mom has 3, she has 5, one brother has 2, another has 3, etc., up to about 20 total. Cousin #2’s son-in-law hand-builds awesome furniture out of rough-hewn cedar. There will be pictures, I promise.

Then it was off to visit Cousin #3, who was my favorite. He’s the one I’d like to get together with in the future, and he might be coming here in the fall, which would be great! His wife is funny and a bit sarcastic, so I could see bonding with her if I had the chance to get to know them better. He shares my love of cooking and made dinner using cast iron cookware, which is something I’ve gotten into lately. Their house was cozy (“just right”), the one son we met was independent without being annoyingly rebellious (“just right”), and we talked about our lives after dinner without it feeling like an interview with a stranger (“just right”). I wouldn’t exactly call this guy “Baby Bear,” but he matched my “Goldilocks” better than the other two.

Then it was off to Jackson, WY, and the Grand Tetons. That will be the next blog entry, some time early next week. I may even have recovered some of the pictures by then.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast, by Bill Richardson

I have to thank my Internet friend, Karen from Nova Scotia, for this little gem. And it’s little–only 152 pages. But it’s packed, with hardly a wasted word and at least one quotable phrase per page. I loved it!

Narrated by 50-something fraternal twins Virgil and Hector and a few of their guests, the book takes us to a remote town on a forested Canadian island, where Virgil and Hector operate a B&B for bibliophiles. In fact, some guests visit simply in order to read Proust without distractions. Some of the stories are sad, some wildly hilarious. For example, there’s the man whose office goes on a retreat (is there anything so vile as the office retreat?), leaving him in the woods to talk to the trees — one of which orders him to “get the hell out!” Then there’s the ne’er-do-well cousin who, after an epiphany, “spent the rest of his days, and the rest of his income, traveling the world, seeking out musical eggcups. He picked them up in Istanbul and Paris, in Geneva and Beirut.” Waffle, the brothers’ cat, and Mrs. Rochester, the parrot they inherited from their mother, hunt mice together, with Mrs. Rochester calling “kittykittykitty” when she spots one. I laughed out loud about every other page.

This is great book for animal lovers. Mrs. Rochester has one salty phrase in her vocabulary, which she uses at some of the most inopportune moments. There are also some very happy chickens, a music-critic Pekingese named Valentine, and a vast assortment of other pets. The only sad thing that happens is a brief mention of a parrot — not Mrs. Rochester — who died elsewhere. Plus, Waffle is a mighty huntress of small prey. But I have no qualms about recommending this book as SAFE for animal lovers, including and maybe especially bird lovers. Enjoy!

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan

I saw this book in Borders as a remaindered hard back. I remember when Amy Tan’s books flew off the shelves and occupied the best seller lists for months on end, but she seemed to lose her touch for a while, she shifted to children’s books, she became sick, and she sort of drifted off, or so it appeared. I bought the book for $5.99 and invested no expectations in it. And now that I’ve read it, I wonder why it didn’t sell.

Let me be clear: I can be a fan of a writer and still pick them to pieces while loving their work. I can certainly do that with Amy Tan. For example, she always has more characters than she needs and should consolidate some of them but doesn’t. She works at one level of realism for a while, shifts away from it, and shifts back, which is disconcerting to a reader. And for this book in particular, she seems to think people are pretty stupid. I have days when I’d agree with her, but not enough days in a row to write an entire book on that assumption. However… I loved this book.

The story is that of 13 tourists (should have been 9 at most, eliminating Wendy and Wyatt at the very least) organized for a private tour of China and Burma. (The jury is out on whether the sanctions against Burma have any impact, and we won’t go into that here.) But when Bibi Chen, the tour organizer and beyond-the-grave narrator, mysteriously dies, they decide to continue. Bibi had everything planned exquisitely, and once the group breaks from her plan, they immediately encounter trouble. Bits of trouble occur here and there, but then the big trouble happens: 11 of the 12 remaining tourists mysteriously disappear after an encounter with some boatmen from the Karen tribe.

What follows is sad and, at times, heartbreaking. But Tan can be very funny. For example, the 1 tourist who is left behind, Harry Bailley, is a Dog Whisperer sort with his own TV show. And he behaves and thinks like a dog. He’s easily led, he wants to please, he keep encountering women who want to “train” him, and he’s perpetually optimistic. This can be quite amusing – and exasperating. But while there are bits of humor, Tan makes it clear that the Burmest junta is brutal and destructive.

Anyway, I recommend this book. It’s not Tan’s best, but it certainly had no business on the remainder shelves.

As for animals, there are a few animal characters, the most prominent being Pup-pup, an abnormally quiet Shih Tzu puppy. Pup-pup ends up coming out of the experience in a way that should not upset anyone, so there’s no need to spend the book worrying that he’ll be eaten or carried off by a wild animal or anything like that. Harry inherits Bibi’s Yorkie, Poochini, who ends up well. Other dogs include a couple of “sniffer” dogs brought in to search for the lost tourists. Alongside, there is a water buffalo that’s worked too hard, a pig slaughtered for dinner, a kitten lost in one character’s back story, and the fish of the title. So I am going to declare this book SAFE for animal lovers. If you see it at the bookstore, remaindered or not, pick it up!

A Celebration of Weird Garbage Day 2009

Dave thinks I have a dangerous obsession with Weird Garbage Day, more formally known in my community as Spring Clean-up. This is the day on which we can put old furniture, brush, and other outsized items on the curb for pick-up by the city trash trucks. The night before, what we call “the scavengers” drive around in big trucks and pick up whatever they think can be rehabbed and reused. The city trucks then sort the reusable items from the true trash, and take it all away.

I like to see what people put out on the curb. This fascinates me, it’s like a small window into a side of their lives they’d normally not reveal. And I like to see what’s taken away. For example … if you enlarge this page to full screen, you will see a picture of Priscilla, my cat who died last year at the age of 19 1/2. Now, that is very, very old for a cat. And she spent her last year not using the litter box. She used a couple of spots in the basement, and one of those spots was the bottom of a two-tiered coffee table I planned to dump anyway. So on Thursday evening, Dave and I moved the cat-pee-soaked coffee table onto the curb. And yesterday evening, one of the scavengers loaded it into a truck and took it away! I am stunned that this cat-pee-encrusted piece of garbage was lifted onto a truck with the hope that it would prove to be of some use.

Aren’t people amazing? I love the ingenuity and optimism that represents.

Anyway, that’s the big recycling news in my life. Staying with the environmentalism theme, Slate magazine addressed the environmental aspects of microwave oven use. If all you’re doing is heating something, as opposed to really cooking, it’s the environmentally correct thing to do. Happy Belated Earth Day.

Finally, mother love can be recycled. Mother’s Day is coming up in a couple of weeks; I hope Jasmine has a good one.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell

Born in the 1880s, Agnes Shanklin thought she was going to be a pale shadow of a person, living with constant nagging from her mother, having no chance of realizing her dreams, envying her younger sister’s freedom and, for a time, that of her brother. Then the Spanish flu hit, leaving Agnes as the only surviving member of her family — a survivor with an unexpected fortune. Following an uplifting visit to a fancy department store, Agnes decides to visit Egypt. Accompanied by Rosie, the long-haired daschund she’d saved as a puppy, Agnes arrives just as T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia), Winston Churchill, and Gertrude Bell have completed the task of drawing the boundaries of the modern Middle East.

Lawrence, Bell, and Churchill aren’t minor characters in Russell’s thoughtful and sometimes amusing exploration of self-definition and self-discovery. Agnes has quite a lot of interaction with Lawrence, for example. I would have thought it difficult to use historical figures as significant characters to this extent, but Russell pulls it off.

Overall, I thought the book was excellent — Agnes is an endearing narrator, the pacing is good, and the characters are well-drawn. Sometimes it seemed a bit too much like a travelogue, and Churchill came across as a self-absorbed buffoon: possibly true, possibly not, but I’d not seen him presented like that before. These are quibbles, however. I loved this book, I’ll recommend it to my book group, and I recommend it to anyone else looking for a well-written, well-told story.

In terms of animals, this book is most definitely SAFE for animal lovers. Rosie is one of the main characters, and Agnes might not have met Lawrence and the others without her. As authors often do with animal characters, Russell uses Rosie to amp up the tension a few times, but ultimately the dog comes to no harm. There are a few cranky camels, and Lawrence shoves one to get it to behave, but this is a very animal-friendly book, and Rosie is one of the most vividly drawn animal characters I’ve seen in a long time.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Wit’s End, by Karen Joy Fowler

I was wacked out on cold medicine part of the time I was reading this book, so I am going to try to be fair by calling in some additional reviews. I will say, however, that I loved two of Fowler’s previous books, The Jane Austen Book Club and Sister Noon. I didn’t feel that this book measured up — I never felt drawn in, I felt the plot was fuzzy, the protagonist (Rima) seemed weak, etc. It struck me as a good novelist’s first draft more than a finished effort. But like I said, I don’t completely trust my impressions, though I wasn’t that deeply medicated — it’s not like I’m a major NyQuil junkie.

In the story, Rima is the last surviving member of her immediate family and decides to visit her godmother, Addison Early. Addison is an extremely popular mystery novelist who builds dollhouses before starting each book. Addison was also close to Rima’s father, in a relationship that Rima doesn’t quite understand. There is also something about a cult based at a place called “Holy City.” Addison incorporates real people into her books, and there’s some analysis of how fans consider certain characters to be their own, etc., etc. So Rima tries to sort it all out while coming to grips with her losses, and quite frankly, I sort of got lost in all of this.

Anyway, here are highlights from some other reviews:

The Amazon reviews were all over the place, which isn’t normal. The positive reviews praised the Fowler’s wit and voice, the quirky characters, the Santa Cruz setting. The negative reviews noted the lack of a satisfactory conclusion (so maybe I should quit blaming the cold, since I agree), Fowler’s political views (which are the same as mine, so I thought this was a plus), the fuzziness of the plot (yes!), and a sense that the characters weren’t “real” enough (they weren’t, but that doesn’t bother me). If I were reviewing on Amazon, I would give the book 3 stars out of a possible 5.

Elsewhere, Louis Bayard, writing for Salon, actively disliked the book. The Washington Post reviewer found it “unengaging.” And the reviewer for the Baltimore City Paper loved it. I think there are enough reviewers disliking the book that I’m safe saying that I don’t recommend it.

If you are an animal lover considering reading this book, rest assured that it is SAFE. The book’s two long-haired miniature daschunds, Berkeley and Stanford, are all over the place in the story and come to no harm. Addison uses a cat as a murder weapon in one of her mysteries, but its fate is never revealed. An otter released from an aquarium attacks baby seals on page 220, but that incident is never mentioned again.

Two Dogs and A Cat

How can you not love Stump, the winner of the 2009 Westminster Dog Show? Like my cat Eddie, he’s old-ish and he’s been through a medical crisis. Here is a YouTube video I dug up this morning, showing highlights of the Best in Show competition:

I also like this piece from MSNBC  that I can’t upload as a video for some reason. But there’s a video.

From last year, since it is so very popular on this site, I’ll repeat Uno’s win from last year.

Finally, talking about old dogs and their medical conditions,  my cat Eddie has a lot in common with Stump, in that he almost died. I do get a lot of hits on this site looking for tube-feeding information. So here’s an update: Eddie is thriving! He’s even engaging in some architecture, which is a little weird. He likes to arrange his toys in lines and circles. He recently made a line of his non-catnip toys, and a circle of his catnip toys. He then slept in the circle. Here are some pictures: