Stanley and Sophie
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
"I fell in love with a prideful, tense bundle of muscle and sinew that stood seventeen inches high. You would see a small brown dog; I saw perfection."
So begins the story of Kate Jennings's unexpected love affair with two border terriers, first Stanley, then, a few years later, Sophie. A fiercely intelligent writer, an astute observer of people and her surroundings, a recent widow not ready to face her grief, an irascible Australian with no time for indulgent New Yorkers and their pampered pets, Jennings falls hard. She is swept off her feet, stunned by the depth of her love. Her life is suddenly overtaken by Stanley and, when she is seduced into getting him a companion, by the pair of them.
But after several years with her willful yet cherished dogs, Jennings came to the heartrending realization that they needed more than she could give -- and that she must reassess her own life, too. First and foremost, Stanley and Sophie is a book about dogs, understanding them, doing the best by them. It is also a vivid chronicle of Jennings's grief and sadness -- for the loss of a husband, for the city after September 11, for two pigtailed macaques in Bali, for a world going to hell in a handbasket. This is a bittersweet and darkly humorous memoir about the way two rivalrous, demanding, idiosyncratic, exhilarating dogs gave Jennings daily purpose and showed her the way to her own heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Jennings (Snake) has penned an affectionate if uneven memoir of life with two rambunctious border terriers, Stanley and Sophie, who become her "tonic" and greatest consolation following her husband's death after a long battle with Alzheimer's. Never really a dog person (she initially dismisses them as "handbags with a heartbeat"), the author changes her mind after falling in love with Stanley's "prickly, prideful, independent" spirit. Zippy chapters narrate the challenges of their cohabitation, the introduction of Sophie into their pack and a New York known only to dog owners. Jennings strikes jarring notes along the way, however, especially in failing to satisfyingly explore her grief after her husband's death. And in a bizarre twist that will be genuinely shocking to the reader and despite her avowed adoration of her dogs Jennings gives both away halfway through the book. Stanley and Sophie are rendered with such warmth and wit that the book suffers greatly from their sudden disappearance, and the author's decision never elucidated makes her seem less rather than more familiar as the memoir proceeds.
