The Wrong Dog Dream
A True Romance
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The author calls this "a true romance," saying, it's the part of her personal history she, being superstitious, was almost afraid to write. She'd grown up accustomed to bad luck, but had – by accident or miracle – survived her own circumstances: being orphaned, her own misspent youth, the chaos of a broken marriage. She'd more than survived, she'd even triumphed and had awakened into a kind of charmed splendor to find herself living in a white marble city with storybook castles, knowing famous people, being invited to the White House to listen to her husband discuss Yeats with the President of the United States, as Bill Clinton drinks Diet Coke from the can.
And into this fabled chapter of the writer's life comes the perfect dog, an English Springer Spaniel named Whistler who arrives not only the family pet, but as her private symbol of triumph over all that age–old sadness. She wants to ignore it but can't help but see that their perfect pup is something of a neurotic mess, snarling at manhole covers, barking at children, growling at people in wheelchairs.
The writer herself is not seemingly done with the anxieties born of all that early trauma and loss, and she begins to worry obsessively about losing this difficult dog, the one they so love. Wrrrrnnnggdgggg! she begins to dream. Wrrrrrnnnnng dgggg!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Filled with anxiety over ending up with the wrong dog, Vandenburgh (Failure to Zigzag) sets up a personal exploration around these fears. After moving from California to Washington, D.C., with her husband, Jack, the two decide that the best remedy for their childless blues is to purchase a purebred English springer spaniel named Whistler, but he is a high-strung, overbred kennel club dog and not the mongrelly kind of the author's childhood. Though this memoir contains moving passages about Vandenburgh's deceased father and escapes to a forest cabin with her brother and their childhood dog, Doctor Ross, such highlights are overshadowed by repetitive, and occasionally whiny passages about how the author prefers the company of her West Coast friends to the folks in her new city. In such moments, Vandenburgh risks coming across as a privileged complainer the moment Whistler lets out a whimper or a growl.