Dog Lady admits she dragged her feet before devouring Alison Pace’s “A Pug’s Tale” in a single bite on a tepid morning extending into a hot afternoon stretching into a languid evening during vacation. This is so fetching, well-written, and creative. Forget the pug. Well, don’t forget the pug because Pace does an admirable job weaving the dog Max into the story. The clever author pays homage to the full life of being a dog keeper without turning this “Tale” into sappy “fur baby” froth.
In a scene where Hope McNeill, our heroine, hangs out with a fellow pug keeper, she thinks of what a small snorting dog has brought into her life: “. . .I have witnessed myself becoming a true dog person. I have witnessed this almost as if standing a distance from events as they unfolded, as I became preoccupied with dog foods and doggie gyms, with the connection I felt to world because of Max, with the people in the neighborhood I never would have noticed and now exchange daily greetings with, all because of a dog.”
Yup, doggie-ness happened the same way to Dog Lady.
“A Pug’s Tale” (Berkley, $10.20 new on Amazon) takes the reader down unexpected hallways at the hallowed Metropolitan Museum of Art and dispenses lessons in fine art while weaving an occasionally-implausible mystery. When Hope gets most of her clues to solve the caper from her dreams of Max speaking to her, Dog Lady had to roll her eyes a little. Still, Max speaks to Hope in the matter-of-fact way Shorty once spoke to Dog Lady in a dream.
Pug fanciers will obviously revel in “A Pug’s Tale.” They will not be able to resist the opening scene in the Temple of Dendur Hall (read first chapter). But anyone who seeks a good beach yarn will not feel left out.
Leave a Reply
Categories: Chewing It Over
Posted on: Sunday, July 24th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Follow Responses:RSS 2.0 feed or trackback from your own site.