Year of the Dog

At first I was not sure I was going to love this, but I am now so invested in this book that I don't want it to end. Further, I just wept my way through Chapter 36 with my stomach in knots. Buy this book. You will love it.

Thoroughly enjoyed the book. Great look at Vermont from an "outsider's" view. Being a Vermonter myself I found this particularly interesting. Not the usual "dog story" but well interwoven with people, places, and interesting events.

I've never read Hearon before, but am delighted to find a new-to-me author! I thoroughly loved this book, and even cried at the end. Happy tears. Though at times I did skim because I wasn't interested in some of the detail. I would've like a little more tension in the story, but you know, sometimes life isn't high tension, is it? Hearon is a wonderful story teller and the plot line with the dog gripped me completely.

A simple, short, and lovely read. The author dealt with painful subjects and yet did it without pathos. Though Janey has suffered a lot of indignity and pain, she does not indulge in great flights of self pity and chooses, instead, to build a new life for herself. She shows a great deal of strength and growth over the course of the novel and though she's level-headed and calm in the face of some pretty major emotional events, I didn't feel that she was unbelievable as a character. Hearon also dealt sensitively with the issue of Aunt May and her relationship and did a good job of making James something of an immature and sometimes exasperating but still lovable character. There was an overall feeling of serenity to this novel due to Hearon's treating her characters' various tragedies as hardships but not tragedies of epic proportions. This lent the book a very realistic feel and really rang true. Overall I felt this book was a lovely celebration of the ordinariness of life, of its trials and tribulations and triumphs, and of the way we must pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and carry on.

One of the wonderful aspects of this wonderful novel is that it is both a human-human love story and a human-dog love story. Let's start with the heroine--Janey--who is competent, loving, funny, and believable. Then there is James, shy and wounded, whom I fell in love with even before she did. The author's description of their growing relationship is delicate and charming and dear. Janey's parents are as terrible--then comprehensible--as Hearon meant them to be. Aunt May is brilliant, one of the most appealing fictional women I have met in ages. But, in fact, all the supporting characters are wonderful--even the thugs who live upstairs from Janey. Finally, there is the dog, whose name is Beulah. Every description of Beulah is so perfect--every movement, every gesture, every look--that I was glowing with pride for her progress and dreading the moment when the year of training might end. I profoundly admire Hearon's skill, grace, humanity, and humor. I unequivocally recommend this novel, which is seamless, engrossing, suspenseful, intelligent, and loving.