Dog by Andy Mulligan
What life can you find for yourself, when it seems to be marked out at the start that this – the only one you get – begins at such a lowly place? That's the question the dog in Dog faces, especially when a snide spider tells him he is the runt of the litter, and instead of being bought has been selected by an adult only because he's free. He wasn't even really chosen, and they had thought to get a cat. Oddly enough the mutt gets to be called Spider by Tom, the lad who gets to call him his, but he's fraught with self-doubt. The spider tells him he's only going to cause harm – which he does. But the neighbourhood cat declares that Spider has something of the feline in his mongrel mix, and tempts him across to her way of living. Tom himself, meanwhile, is being nudged into thinking he's beginning at a lowly place – he ignores his absent mother, he has the privilege of a scholarship for him to get beaten up and bullied at school, and he can't see much future for himself, either. Can Spider work out his lot, and match his life with that of Tom, or will outside agencies get in the way?
| Dog by Andy Mulligan | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A slightly awkward mix of philosophically-minded drama turns into a quite frenetic adventure for both child and animal characters. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 256 | Date: October 2017 |
| Publisher: Pushkin Children's Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781782691716 | |
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First things first, you don't half meet several unusual characters in this book. At first I thought Phil was one of them – I thought he was an inverted-commas lodger, but he seems to be a lodger, albeit with his own place in the family's errands and discipline, and not the replacement for Tom's mother. But the animals are most singular, and here I wish I had taken up the suggestion of a philosophy A-Level, for I would know which animal was which –ism. Certainly there is a bit of nihilism about Thread the spider, with his macabre gallery of cocooned food struggling to be let out of their misery, and his gloom-laden utterances about how Spider the dog will not be able to change, and will not be able to curb his canine enthusiasms enough to be accepted. But I don't think Moonlight, the cat, is so easy to pin down. The narration eventually lets slip that she's a manipulative bitch, but what –ism is it where you deliberately take people from the frying pan into the fire purely to prove your self-declared superiority?
That philosophical bent was part of a sort of unease I have to admit to finding while reading this. It clearly is a fantasy world of some kind – a spider, dog, cat and other animals all speaking the same language, and understanding the human world as well as all their own so well. It certainly gets into the surreal when Moonlight tries to make Spider behave like a cat, but while that's actually quite fun and character-laden, he had failed to convince me as a dog. Yes, he likes playing fetch, and he visits a lamp-post when out and about, but he's a puppy. It's never mentioned that he's being house-trained. Perhaps I shouldn't read so much into it that it wasn't there, but as his behaviour and juvenile view of the world is so vital to the book's core, you'd think he would be given the chance to poo in the wrong place now and again.
And as that finding your rightful place when your view of the world is so young, so tainted and so laden with the unfortunate is the reason for the book, so that all has to apply to Tom as well. And to some extent it does – this takes place over a short timeline but he certainly grows into being an eloquent kid able to convey his anxiety and demand what he wants. But he's not the only character that has needs – Spider, being the title character, is certainly able to bring his to the fore. And that's what turns this book – perhaps a little too suddenly and sweepingly – into an Incredible Journey-styled drama, as characters well-established and short-lived, strange and familiar, all combine to make this really a dramatic quest adventure.
Still, that should have been what I was expecting – an author with the narrative drive of the likes of Andy Mulligan is hardly going to lose it overnight. I found the full-on drama of the last two thirds – and the sporadically-used but strong sense of humour – to be really worth my time, so even while I had issues with things early on, and how the nature of the book kind of swung, I would still have to recommend this as a PG read, and a great portrayal of loyalty and familial love.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
It struck me the animal's story also had the charisma of a Frank Cottrell Boyce drama.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Dog by Andy Mulligan at Amazon.com.
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