Customer Reviews

Dog People

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As painful as this story was to read, it simply can't be put down. For many of us, growing up was a whole lot more like this than the Brady Bunch or Cleaver household. One result of Dog People is that it takes us back to those dysfunctional days to acknowledge and comfort our struggling child, embodied here by Trisha. That power is what makes McInerney-Whiteford a natural-born storyteller, and her talent is fully displayed in this well-developed and moving novel.

McInerney-Whiteford's second novel, Dog People, is a finely-wrought tale of the difficulties faced when a young girl comes of age. The (sometimes startlingly) prescient narrator, 12-year old Trisha Dalton, her parents, and her sisters Franny and Cat live in a centuries-old haunted house in Salem, Massachusettes. Creating emotionally complex and inextricably bound characters, McInerney-Whiteford poignantly describes Trisha's fate as we find her caught within the web of a quirky, dangerous, addictive and finally tragic family life. So insulated are Trisha and her family by their own manic and outrageous attempts simply to survive that the turbulent and historic decade in which the story takes place rarely enters the narrator's consciousness. ". . .these events were only headlines. . .at most, they reverberated into our world indirectly and then only briefly." For Trisha, the real trauma and turbulence of the 60's lie within and create in her an irreproachable ache of absence, which McInerney-Whiteford searingly describes as "exactly Billie Halliday's shape. . .an absence that had been there all my life. . .an absence only Billie Halliday could possibly fill." Creating descriptions such as these are reminiscent of Raymond Carver's singlularly definitive moments; moments which make the reader pause, shudder with sudden recognition, and fill with grief and longing. These are McInerny-Whiteford's gifts to us. The narrative flow, composed of moments and flights of beauty and despair such as these, begins its evocative ascent from page one and and continues long after the reader has finished the novel. A brilliant and soul-searching departure from McInerney-Whiteford's first novel, Burning Down the House, this reader is overcome by the intelligence, beauty, grace, and wit that shine forth from Dog People, and is increasingly illuminated in McInerney-Whiteford's fiction. More, please!

This writer brings a level of honesty to her writing to which readers respond almost without being aware they are noing so. They find themsevles caught up by an unfolding tale told by and about old friends the reader just didn't know he had until moment.

It is this attribute which reminds me most of the work of Harper Lee. This book is at least as powerful as "to Kill A Mockingbird" In my opinion it deserves a very wide audience.

It probably would make as good a film as Mockingbird as well.

Cheers to this fine book and to its very talented author.

A Fine, Sensitive, Lovely Book
Rarely do I read a book as generous and gentle and moving as DOG PEOPLE. Merry McInerney-Whiteford beautifully explores what it meant to come of age in America in the heart of the 60s revolution, in a family as unstable as the society as a whole riddled with its own excesses, addictions, and boundary breaking. This is an exploration of gain in the face of loss, hope in the face of hopelessness, redemption in spite of death. A fine, oddly-neglected, book!

Dog People strikes right to the heart of American culture, the dysfunctional family, and the tragedy left in the wake. This book evokes both pity and fear, the elements necessary for true tragedy. Merry McInerney-Whiteford has written an important book, and she has written it masterfully.

One can't help but be completely captivated by McInerney-Whiteford's tale. Her attention to detail, nuance, and crystal-clear portrayals makes her a writer well worth following. Soulful, powerful and hopeful - her images are vivid, her characters real, and the plot, while painful, still anchors the reader with a keen understanding of pure resilience. You won't find romance novel, dime-store fluff here - this writer offers intellect, intrigue and 24 karat substance.

This book was very good, so well-written, and very moving. The setting (1968 in an enormous 1700s house isolated on a large tract of land in Salem, Massachusets) was perfect for the isolated, turbulent family and the scary plot. Alcoholism, gambling-ism, adultery--they're all here, and also here is a smart, kind, caring child named Trisha. She is like a symbol of hope, not just for the family, but for the country, for humanity. I really enjoyed reading this book, and was really sad when I realized I was nearing the end. Recommended highly!

Such a powerful, moving book! I hadn't heard of it (till a friend loaned me her copy several weeks ago) which seems bizarre to me because it's one of the most beautiful, best-written books I've read. Trisha is a true survivor, keeping herself safe in the storm of her parents' raging addictions, never seeming resentful or bitter herself. I loved these girls, Trisha, Frannie, and Cat; and I could see their parents weren't bad people, really, just sick addicts. So the way I see this book, it's a testament to the enormous destructive capability of addiction, and to the equally possiblity of survival and redemption.

Brilliantly told, witty, sad - McInerney draws you in, pulls at your heart-strings, and never lets go! McInerney has a lot to say and even more to teach us - what a gift she is to the literary world!

This story is well-told and well-written. Like an accident-scene gawker, I couldn't put it down when I read it back in September of 2000. Two years later, images from this book still haunt me, but I wish they didn't. If you like to read about highly dysfunctional people treating each other as badly as you can imagine, then you'll enjoy this one.

How ironic that the author's first name is Merry! She's written a story sadder than a week's worth of the evening news.