Dog Days
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The author of Grass and The Naked Tree returns with a profound tale of family
Yuna never wanted to adopt a dog. But with her partner in mourning–and in desperate need of a boost in morale–she gives in to his humble request. And in the grand tradition of reluctant pet owners, she and their puppy soon become inseparable. The young couple even goes so far as to relocate to soothe their new canine pal’s anxiety. After all, there’s nothing like a move to the country to set yourself right. Right?
The idyll of a quiet life soon gives way to a surprising degree of antagonism, including clashes with long-time local residents of a different generation. The culture shock is palpable for all three urban transplants as the isolation of their new environs starts to sink in. They eventually adopt another dog, and still another–all while reckoning with the ups and downs of middle-age and childlessness in an unforgivingly traditional milieu.
Dog Days is critically-acclaimed and multi-award-winning cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s first foray into contemporary fiction. With the aid of veteran translator Janet Hong, Gendry-Kim’s twenty-first century tale of an unconventional family building trust with one another and their neighbors is a heartfelt exploration of compassion and the unlikely places we find the love we all need.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harvey Award winner Gendry-Kim (The Waiting) delivers a poignant semi-autobiographical graphic novel about a couple who love dogs, in a small town that often does not. Yuna and her husband, Hun, move from Seoul to the countryside for their anxious dog Carrot's benefit (after dosing Carrot with Prozac doesn't do the trick). There they meet their new puppy, Potato, as well as a series of other dogs whom they briefly befriend. Not everyone sees dogs as family members, though, in this alternately welcoming and insular rural community. One monsoon day, Yuna and Hun catch their neighbor slicing up charred dog meat. Later, they encounter a truck soliciting dogs for processing—the local industry of turning canines into medicine or soju is an "open secret." (In the afterword, Gendry-Kim acknowledges that earlier generations faced food scarcity, and expresses concern that her narrative could fuel stereotypes.) After they rescue yet another dog, Choco, from a neglectful neighbor, Yuna and Hun later see Choco's former cage occupied by a new dog, lending the narrative's final pages a wistful tone. In Gendry-Kim's windblown pen-and-ink illustrations, the dogs often loom over landscapes or dwarf the narrator, indicating the outsize place they occupy in their humans' hearts. It's a clear-eyed ode to the complications of living with both pets and people.
