If you know a dog-person, or a human owned entirely by dogs, this is a book you want to share with them straight away. While I was reading Jonathan Unleashed by the luminously witty Meg Rosoff, that peerless writer about children, young folk and dogs, I was casting sidelong glances at my sons, hoping that by some magic, they’d transform into dogs, just for a week or so. Just for a bit, I should love to be in the company of canines like the super-intelligent ‘city’ collie Dante and the sweet-natured spaniel Sissy who light up this book with the ‘Byzantine quality of their inner lives’. Any dog-lover will intuitively respond to second-hand dog-owner Jonathan Trefoil’s concern about ‘the practical and spiritual difficulties of caring for other sentient beings’. Jonathan has stumbled into adulthood, somewhat bewildered at himself for having done so, and is negotiating a perilous work and life situation in New York, of all places on earth. The book commences with quintessential Rosoff-style pokerfaced humour: ‘Jonathan came home from work one day to find the dogs talking about him.
November 2016, volume 40, No 11