Book Alert / Dog Years -- A Memoir

Dog Years -- A Memoir by Mark Doty, HarperCollins '07, $23.95, 215 pages, ISBN #006117100X.

"No dog has ever said a word, but that doesn't mean they live outside the world of speech. They listen acutely. They wait to hear a term -- biscuit, walk -- and an inflection they know. What a stream of incomprehensible signs passes over them as they wait, patiently, for one of a few familiar words! Because they do not speak, except in the most limited fashion, we are always trying to figure them out. The expression is telling: to 'figure out' is to make figures of speech, to invent metaphors to help us understand the world. To choose to live with a dog is to agree to participate in a long process of interpretation -- a mutual agreement, though the human being holds most of the cards."

Thus does Mark Doty set the table for his affecting memoir. At its beginning, Doty and his partner already owned Arden, a black retriever. When the author learns that his partner is dying, he adopts a second dog for him, a large golden retriever named Beau, "malnourished and in need of loving care." Soon the two dogs become, at once, Doty's companions and his solace, and eventually the "life force" that keeps him from "abandoning hope during the darkest days."

By now, certain readers have begun to reach for the click to Amazon. You know who you are, you who are suckers for "profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss...the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love."