Dog People (Paperback)

~ Merry McInerney-Whiteford (Author) "When I was a child, I felt things moved in circles and held together in circles..." (more)
Key Phrases: wax lips, beautiful changes, cat person, Billy Halliday, Gramma Hattie, Sara Wilde (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Taught to divide the world into "strong and independent" cat people and "weak and needy" dog people, the 12-year-old narrator of this very dark coming-of-age story grows up, during the late 1960s, in a violent family in Salem, Mass., where their roots go deep. Trisha, her parents and her sisters, Cat and Franny, live in a house said to be haunted by their ancestress, one of the witches condemned in 1692 by the infamous Judge Hathorne. After Trisha's grandmother dies, the pressure of keeping up the great gabled house begins to take a ghastly toll on Trisha's parents. Fueled by compulsive drinking and obsessive gambling, the shouting matches between her parents escalate into beatings, and no one in the family is safe. As the family's woes escalate and the scenes of violence become more graphic, a classic picture emerges of the abusive alcoholic, the enabler spouse and the coping children. Even at its most gothic, McInerney-Whiteford's second novel (after Burning Down the House) proceeds with a tragic inevitability that pulls at the heartstrings.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Twelve-year-old Trisha Dalton believes there are two different kinds of people in the world: dog people and cat people. "While cat people were strong and independent, dog people were weak and needy." This novel is the story of Trisha's attempt to survive her parents' weaknesses. The litany of horrors in Trisha's life includes being raped by a family friend and living with a drunk mother and wife-beating father. At the story's finale, her dad (shortly after he crushes her kitty to death) allows her older sister (also a "Cat") to fall to her death from a hotel balcony. What McInerney-Whiteford (Burning Down the House, LJ 10/15/94) does best is to see the world through a young girl's eyes. Trisha's mechanisms of coping include watching television, eating candy, hanging out with her girlfriend, and, sometimes, denying reality. The author captures a year of a child's personal chaos in natural, direct prose. This novel will appeal mostly to those who are fascinated by dysfunctional families or stories of victimization. [The author is the ex-wife of novelist Jay McInerney.AEd.]ACarol J. Bissett, Dittlinger Memorial Lib., New Braunfels, T.
-ACarol J. Bissett, Dittlinger Memorial Lib., New Braunfels, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; Reprint edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312872925
• ISBN-13: 978-0312872922
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,611,162 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A heart-wrenching page-turner, January 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Dog People (Hardcover)

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.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McInerney-Whiteford is a deliciously gifted writer., January 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dog People (Hardcover)

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!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reminds me of Harper Lee. Characters are real and believable, January 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dog People (Hardcover)

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.