The Labrador Pact: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Matt Haig (Author) "Dogs like to talk..." (more)
Key Phrases: eternal reward, thousand smells, Grandma Margaret, Danny Thomas, The Labrador Pact (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In the second novel by British author Haig (The Dead Fathers Club), morality is left to the dogs. Prince, the Labrador narrator, lives by the creed, Duty over all. At the beginning of the novel, it seems that Prince has failed all of humanity and disgraced Labs for all time, and, as he is about to be put down, he tells his own tragic story. Although he clings to the teachings of his mentor, Henry, a former police dog, Prince can't keep his married master Adam's eye from roving toward Emily, the new gal in town who just happens to be married to old schoolmate Simon. Further puzzling Prince are the aromas of fear and desire that Adam's wife, Katie, exudes whenever Simon comes around. And he certainly can't seem to sniff out a fix for the teenage woes encountered by Adam and Katie's two kids. With dogged determination, he sacrifices his own pleasure to protect and serve the family that can neither understand his entreaties nor appreciate his level of commitment. Although a little heavy-handed and arguably gimmicky, readers can't help feeling bad for Prince, a good dog just trying to do the right thing. (Mar.)
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Molly Gloss

In the strange world of Matt Haig's new novel, The Labrador Pact, the fate of human society depends on dogs; and since the Springer (Spaniel) Uprising, that world is in turmoil. It is dogs who have always kept the human Family from flying apart, and now that dogs have begun to seek their own pleasure -- to fetch sticks for the fun of it, rather than to please their masters -- the Family is in jeopardy. Humans, knowing nothing of the Uprising (sticks, after all, are still being fetched), "attributed the breakdown in Family life to other factors. The end of community. A longer working day. The growing secularisation of Western society. Bad diet. They couldn't see the real problem. That the dogs had stopped caring."

Well, not all dogs. In these troubling times, Labradors still adhere to the Pact and its list of Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots setting out a dog's duties to the Family, promising, like any decent belief system, an Eternal Reward for the faithful: "To be reunited with your brothers and sisters, to run wild and free in a humanless universe."

Haig's book steers far north of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, if not quite into the epic neighborhood of Animal Farm and Watership Down. The animal perspective is fully adult -- a puckish slant on the disillusionments of modern domestic life.

Prince, the narrator of this fey novel, is a young Labrador rescued from the Dog House by the Hunters, a seemingly perfect suburban family of two kids, a long-standing marriage, a Volvo and now a dog. Being human, the Hunters have no idea they are the ones being rescued -- that by adopting a Labrador, they have gained another chance at happiness. From his wise old canine mentor, Prince learns the difference between humans and dogs: "Whereas dogs can learn to suppress their instincts, for humans there is no hope." And since the Hunters are a Family at the edge of dissolution, it falls to Prince to do what he can to protect them from their self-destructive behaviors.

One of the chief tenets of the Pact is that humans must never know dogs are in control. In fact, the dogs are at some pains to conceal the secret of their power: They not only understand human speech (and for that matter, squirrel and cat speech, too), but they can discern from a scent all the human emotions, from the passionate biggies -- fear, anger, lust -- to much more subtle feelings of confusion, relief or mild contentment.

In most respects, these are dogs that behave convincingly like dogs. "After a couple of dummy-throws, he swung his arm above his shoulder and released the stick. I started to run, fast, as it flew through the air, up towards the sky. As I ran, I watched it all the way, even when flowers hit my chest, watching, waiting for it to reach the highest point, where it paused, motionless, before heading back down -- fast, faster -- until it met the ground in front of me with an awkward bounce. Before it came to rest, the stick was between my teeth, and I was jogging back towards Adam, triumphant."

At crucial moments, though, these dogs behave not much like dogs, but very much like humans -- even to the point of committing murder. It seems as if Haig, a British writer, might be nudging us to see a glimmer of Shakespeare in all the intrigue and machinations: Besides Prince and Henry, there are dogs named Lear and Falstaff, humans called Hal and Kate; and the Hunters' teenage son spouts lines from "Henry IV, Part I" as he practices for his A-level exams.

Yet these allusions are never more than glimmers. In this mostly comic novel, moments feel as if they might spiral into Something Deeper, but the murders are barely acknowledged as real events, and ultimately nothing much seems to be at stake.

The Hunters are, at best, sketchy symbols for our 21st-century disintegrating families: Kate is a clean-freak wife who has withheld sex from her husband for 13 years for no good reason that we ever learn; Charlotte is a rebellious teen who tries suicide and afterward sees the error of her rebellion; Hal is a 16-year-old who masturbates in his bedroom; Adam is a man in the throes of middle-age who takes up jogging when the new young neighbor flirts with him.

Possibly we're not meant to know them any better than this. Perhaps these superficialities are all that Prince perceives, despite his vaunted insight and instinct. Perhaps that's part of the irony. This is, after all, a world in which dogs have become "sniffaholics," a world in which Henry's morning lesson for the young Prince is "Advanced Wag Control." Rather than Shakespeare, the resemblance that comes to mind is to a winking, self-aware Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

There's reason to wonder if the traditional realist novel has worn itself out. Certainly, several respected novelists (Michael Chabon, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood) have recently abandoned the form in favor of speculative fictions of various kinds. But The Labrador Pact is not in this class. As Haig pushes beyond the usually somber boundaries of Urban Dysfunctional Fiction, maybe we should just enjoy his novel for what it is: a wry, serio-comic family tail, er, tale, for our serio-comic times.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Printing edition (February 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067001852X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670018529
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #604,936 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A keen, clear-eyed outsider's insight on human foibles, good and bad, April 3, 2008

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Crises of faith are not new subjects for fiction. But what's surprising about Matt Haig's novel, THE LABRADOR PACT, is the protagonist undergoing that crisis: a dog. Not just any dog, but Prince, the eternally faithful companion of the Hunters, a family in crisis. Prince knows that it's his job to preserve the integrity of his Family at all costs, thereby helping to maintain the integrity of all human families everywhere.

Prince's family, however, seems bound and determined to test the abilities of their Labrador. Adam and Kate, the father and mother of the Hunter clan, have been married for years but find themselves drawn by desire to new neighbors, figures from the past who suddenly turn up in their relatively comfortable lives and wreak havoc with the sanctity of marriage. Then there's Charlotte, a 13-year-old Goth girl whose desire for freedom clashes tragically with her father's fears for the safety of his little girl. And there's Hal, whose plans to ace his A levels and go on to university might be permanently derailed by his tendency to experiment with drugs.

What's a lowly Labrador to do? In Prince's case, every new, perplexing turn of events in his human family raises more questions. Why do humans behave as they do? Is it really possible for a family dog to preserve the sanctity of the nuclear family? Prince and his fellow Labs certainly think so --- at least at first. Prince's mentor, a golden Lab named Henry, introduces Prince to the finer points of the so-called Labrador Pact --- a solemn vow that places Duty foremost and offers its adherents their Eternal Reward: "If we protect human Families on earth, we will be united with our own in the afterlife." But as Prince grows increasingly entwined with his humans' fates, he begins to question everything, not only his Family's peculiar behavior but also Henry's motives and his own unflinching belief in the Pact. Again, what's a lowly Labrador to do?

Haig's previous adult novel published in the United States, THE DEAD FATHERS CLUB, was a clever, insightful retelling of the story of Hamlet from the point of view of a contemporary child. Astute readers will recognize Haig's affinity for Shakespeare in THE LABRADOR PACT as well, but they will also observe the author's nearly uncanny ability to use a naïve narrator to shed surprisingly sophisticated light on adult concerns and relationships.

Fiction about animals can tread an uneasy line between fantasy and sentimentality. Matt Haig toes that line brilliantly, resulting in a novel about animals that not only sheds light on that most sacred of all relationships --- the one between man and dog --- but that also offers a keen, clear-eyed outsider's insight on human foibles, good and bad. Readers fortunate enough to inhabit Prince's point of view for a while will walk away from THE LABRADOR PACT humbled, thoughtful and deeply affected --- and with a whole new perspective on their own relationships with man's best friend.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Innovative & Original, June 11, 2008

By	Yolanda S. Bean (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

I really loved this book! I am a big fan of dog-lit, and this certainly is one of the more inventive stories about a dog and his family. This is a story of a family, as told through the eyes of their Labrador - a Lab with a sacred mission and philosophy to protect his family. There is so much to say about this great book, but I daren't given away any of the exciting happenings. It is just a really great book, and fun to read.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Hated the ending, January 5, 2009

By	D. Carson "wandering soul" (Capitola, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One of the most frustrating endings of all the books I've read! The book was, to me, mildly interesting for most of the book. As the book tells you up front that the dog is put to sleep at the end, I was curious enough as to how a good, caring dog like this Labrador obviously was could be driven to do something so bad that he would be put to sleep, so I read the whole book, but I'm sorry I did.

SPOILER ALERT
The dog did nothing more serious (as far as the humans know) than try to defend himself from another dog who was trying to kill him and accidentally biting one of his family when they tried to separate the dogs. And for that, this beautiful dog is put to sleep. It made me wish I'd followed my first instincts and quit reading much earlier on.