The Boy and the Dog
A Novel
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“An amazing, beautiful book . . . It shows how one dog’s dignified presence can bring connection and love to a fractured world.” ―Cat Warren, New York Times bestselling author of What the Dog Knows
One dog changes the life of everyone who takes him in on his journey to reunite with his first owner in this inspiring novel about the bond between humans and dogs and the life-affirming power of connection.
Dogs had a special relationship to humans. . . . They understood the human heart and were attuned to it in a way no other creature was.
Following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, a young man in Japan finds a stray dog outside a convenience store. The dog’s tag says “Tamon,” a name evocative of the guardian deity of the north. The man decides to keep Tamon, becoming the first in a series of owners on the dog’s five-year journey to find his beloved first owner, Hikaru, a boy who has not spoken since the tsunami. An agent of fate, Tamon is a gift to everyone who welcomes him into their life.
At once heartrending and heartwarming, intimate and panoramic, suspenseful and luminous--and deepened in its emotion by the author’s mastery of the gritty details and hardscrabble circumstances that define the lives of the various people who take Tamon in on his journey--this bestselling, award-winning novel weaves a feel-good tale of survival, resilience, and love beyond measure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The human-canine bond is the subject of the affecting English-language debut from Seishū, capably translated by Watts. The story opens in the aftermath of 2011's "triple disaster," as the narrator describes the earthquake and tsunami that brought about a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. When Kazumasa, a down-on-his-luck factory worker, comes across a strangely self-possessed dog named Tamon (according to the dog's tag) in a convenience store parking lot, he decides to adopt him. Suddenly Kazumasa's life changes: his elderly mother perks up from her dementia, and a classmate offers him a job as a getaway driver for a band of foreign thieves. After the caper ends in tragedy, Tamon finds himself with a new owner, and when that chapter ends, he is adopted by childless couple Sae and Taiki, whose marriage is troubled. Each owner remarks on Tamon's remarkable presence and notes that the dog seems to be on a journey: while at rest he always "faced west"—but "What was in the west?" Sae wonders. When Tamon finally reaches his destination, the reunion waiting for him is indeed moving. Seishū imbues Tamon with a nobility that never feels sentimental or overdrawn. With this tender display, he proves himself a gifted storyteller.
