Recommendations from our site
“The main relationship in the book is a triangle. A woman writer has had this very long-term friendship with a problematic older male writer. At the beginning of the book, he commits suicide. He doesn’t leave a note, and the only instruction that he’s left is that he wants our narrator to take care of his Great Dane. Unfortunately, she’s in a tiny Manhattan apartment, and she’s not allowed to have a dog. The dog is in mourning for his master, and so is she. She and this dog are heartbroken. It’s a love triangle, a grief triangle, between the three of them. It becomes about her thinking about her friendship with this man who she knows has, quite unashamedly, slept with lots of his students. It was consensual, but there’s a power differential—he was a professor. He would say, ‘Teaching is erotic. This just happens.’ She confesses she actually slept with him too, but at the very beginning of their relationship. He’s had multiple wives and affairs…It’s a complicated book. It raises a lot of questions. I had lots of debates with my friends who’ve read it, about whether or not she lets the male writer get away with too much. You may see the dog on the cover and ask, ‘Is this a feminist novel?’ But yes, I would argue it is.” Read more...
The Best Feminist Books: 50 Years of Virago Press
Sarah Savitt, Publisher
