Reviews for Wild Dogs: A Novel

The average rating for Wild Dogs: A Novel based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-03-08 00:00:00 Shane Nugent Alice has lost her dog, Hawk. Alice’s boyfriend has taken the dog and dumped her in a wood behind a farm where a pack of wild dogs is known to roam. When Alice goes to the field to call for Hawk to return to her, she encounters five other souls who have lost their dogs to the pack. A loose bond forms between these six people who stand on the edge of the woods night after night calling their dogs home, and it is their stories that drive this novel. As Alice looks back upon the events of the summer and attempts to deal with her feelings for one of the other dog owners, she says: It is impossible to fully inhabit a moment again. That is part of the inherent sorrow of life. This can never be that. I can never really let you know how much I felt for you that August afternoon. So much of this novel is about those fleeting moments, the ones in which we might have touched a person or affected their lives; the moments in which we are touched or affected ourselves. And it is about the love we feel for an animal that we think would never desert us, but has; or perhaps a person who we thought would, but doesn’t. Each of these people is carrying the load of being unusual, abused, frightened, or just alone. Each of them is clinging to the memory of their animal, as we cling to the unconditional love of a pet, particularly if we have not known love of any other kind. It’s like you’ve got your foot in a door and for a while you can keep the door open, but the door just gets heavier and heavier against your foot and eventually it closes shut on you. There was one day when I couldn’t keep my foot in that door any more. There was one day when I no longer believed the dogs would come back and that one last day shut out all the other days when I did believe. Trusting one another or even themselves is impossible. I have been betrayed so many times that, of course, it is what I know and what I will eventually do myself. Never trust anyone who has been betrayed. Betrayal never loses its edge, never really goes away. This is a short novel, only 185 pages, and I read it in one sitting. I had no desire to pull away from it. I felt so attached to the dogs and the people. I wanted the happily ever after ending. What I got was a strong sense of what it is to be lonely, misunderstood, mistreated, betrayed and what it feels like to suddenly realize you are not the only person dealing with those realities. Helen Humphrey is a masterful writer and this is a powerful book.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-03-19 00:00:00 Ryan Meza WILD DOGS is my third Helen Humphreys book, and I have enjoyed them all immensely. This novel intertwines the lives of 6 characters who have lost their dogs to a wild pack roaming the countryside. It is a probing meditation on life and relationships, both human and canine. Humphreys prose is some of the most intuitive that I have ever come across. But, she also tempers her stylistic delivery with undeniable blood and grit. We come to know these characters as they see themselves, and as they are viewed by the others. WILD DOGS is really such a beguiling and subtly riveting novel. What a very fine read. WALTER: "That's what I think of this life now, my life, when I lie awake at night in my room upstairs. Memory is a barricade against forgetting; light is a bulwark against darkness; life is a flex against the stillness of the grave. Maybe that's what I'm trying to do here, clear a space in all the debris, through all the anxieties and worries, where I can just exist, easily and simply, entire, for as long as I have left."