Customer Reviews

Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch

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Dear Mr. Kraft-- you have a great editor but either a) a terrible publicist or b) a devotion to anonymity, or c) I can't figure out c-- do I have to?.

Mr. Kraft, I don't mean to connect your works with the Harry Potter series. But, really, I don't understand why adults are not lining up at chainstores at midnight when your latest book is released. I can only believe that your modesty or shyness prevents this.

So, via a review that you will probably never read, I want to say:
Your books have changed my life, and the life of the twenty or more people who have shared my copies of your novels. My grandmother, aunts, uncles, family friends, and new-found friends have all been enriched by the adventures of Peter Leroy, his family, and other relations.

A personal thank you.

This novel continues/amplies/revises (your pick) the stories that began in "Little Follies" and continued in "Where Do You Stop," "At Home With The Glynns" and "Leaving Small's Hotel." As with all of its predecessors, "Inflating a Dog" blends wordplay and nostalgia with some serious observations on memory and coming to terms with the past. Wonderfully written and hilariously funny in the deadpan manner of Charles Portis ("True Grit," "Dog of the South"), "Inflating a Dog" is one of the very best books I've read this year.

Kraft's Peter Leroy books are a little sweet, a little sexy, and always funny. "Infalting" is no exception. We get Peter's exploration of his possible illegitimacy through role-playing with the sexy Patti, we get his adventures in his mother's plan for meals on the waves, and we get the usual conceit of memoir that isn't memoir. Best of all, Kraft does what so few writers are capable of doing: he entertains and he keeps your interest. You never check your watch while reading an Eric Kraft book.

There is nothing so beguiling, so mesmerizing, so mind-spinning as Inflating a Dog, at least not since Eric Kraft's last book. This book explores familiar Kraft themes: remembering and reconstructing the past (and for whose or what benefit?); desire and discovery; friendship; success and failure and what constitutes each; the nature of fiction(s). The writing is so elegant, so feather-light that you can read it too quickly, too easily, and feel that you've missed something. You have to -- you want to -- go back and read it again to make sure you've gotten it right.

The book is primarily Peter Leroy's rememberances of his mother and friends but it includes bits of Peter's current adult life. The book has both hilarious and heartbreaking passages, sometimes back to back. And it is always surprising, never predictable or common.

Characters from the earlier books appear and make you want to go back and remember what they were like then. Then you wonder if it goes with what they are like now, and then you wonder about the other earlier characters and what happened or will happen to them, and. . . , and. . ., and. Eric Kraft is a very inflationary writer, and to answer a question from an earlier book, he never stops (thank goodness).

I read this quirky little book, but the whole time I felt like I was coming late to the party and had missed the punchline of the joke that was being told as I walked through the door. Sometimes this book moved from quirky to ...just plain silly and not really all that funny. If it had been a sit com, it would have needed a laugh track.

I think there needs to be some indication that, to truly "get" this book, the reader should read the author's previous ones.

The problem with a book like this, the eighth in a series, is that the author often forgets that the reader does not necessarily know the characters and that they need to be fleshed-out and developed for the new reader. Another thing I found is that the plot was very disorganized. There was just too much other stuff thrown in.

I felt like I was lost in a time warp, a reality-fantasy continuum and had no idea of what was happening. I think it was a clever book...but I am not really sure. One book critic said that "Kraft is such a skilled writer that the reader never feels left behind"---well, this reader did!

However, I did enjoy all two aspects: the stories of Peter's mother's failed entrepreneurial schemes (and his attempts to save her) and his questioning of his paternity and the reasons why.

Reading the book as it appeared serially online, I was, in the end, inspired by the ending. I found that Ella was working just as hard to make Peters life a success as Peter was working on hers, that she didnt, perhaps, need him to give her a sense of accomplishment, as he was one of her accomplishments. This doesnt erase the sense of failure that threatens everything in the book, but it does, for me, endorse the human spirit that refuses to accept failure. The common touch that sells is also a universal effort to aspire, to hope. This is an inspiring, moving, funny tale.

AHHHH!!!

That's me venting my frustrating. I'm frustrated because writer Eric Kraft hasn't been getting nearly the attention he deserves for his work. It is hard to describe this book, I don't remember it in words so much as feelings. Feelings of joy, disappointment, sadness, anticipation, and above all satisfaction. Do not listen to the mediocre reviews, they are blind to the true genius of this book.

If they could make a pretty good movie from "Cider House Rules," why not one of Eric Kraft's novels...like this one? His latest makes clear how wonderfully well Kraft composes his "memoirs" on two or three or four levels at once. With "Inflating a Dog", he's perfected his approach such that the book is seamless, a joy to read, and completely absorbing. Never have I wanted to be Peter Leroy more than as he writes him in "Inflating a Dog." The conclusion is quiet and natural, a nice little jazz riff that ends on the perfect note. Luckily for me, I discovered Eric Kraft years ago and by chance read all of his books in order. This is far and away the easiest one to understand and is an ideal first Kraft to sample. When you do, you'll scramble to find the others.