Dog Days (Hardcover)

by Ana Marie Cox (Author) "THE CHAMPAGNE WAS COLD and expensive..." (more)
Key Phrases: spontaneous reel, convention bounce, John Hillman, Four Seasons, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Cox came to fame in 2004 as Wonkette, a D.C. insider whose blog injected (and still injects) levity and sarcasm into the earnest national political scene. In her snarky fictive debut, it's August in a presidential election year, and Kerryesque nominee John Hillman has failed to wow the Democratic convention. Worse yet, Hillman is under attack from the Citizens for Clear Heads, who claim that the candidate, as a student, took part in mind-control experiments, and now may be under someone's control. Campaign staffer and heroine Melanie Thorton must divert the media from the Clear Heads story before it destroys what's left of Hillman's appeal; she also hopes to rekindle her affair with a high-powered (but married) reporter. Desperate to distract the press (and herself), Melanie creates Capitolette, whose wholly fictional blog describes paid sexual dalliances with elected officials. (Cox's early blog link to Washingtonienne, whose exploits match Capitolette's exactly, set in motion the chain of events which would reveal Washingtonienne as real Hill staffer Jessica Cutler.) Wanting to keep the Capitolette story going, Melanie and her best friend find a (very) willing D.C. waitress and teach her to play the role of Capitolette—a role she embraces, in bedrooms if not online, as unintended consequences pile up. Cox aims for a light comedy of Washington power, halfway between Primary Colors and Sex and the City. Her powers of plot construction, though, don't match her political savvy: emotions are predictable, plot twists few. Fans of Wonkette's wit will find themselves better served by her blog—unless they want to revisit August 2004 as seen from the Kerry campaign, which few real Washingtonians (and even fewer Democrats) want to do. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
This first novel, by a former writer of the political blog Wonkette, aims at being a satire of Washington mores but comes off as Beltway chick lit. Melanie Thorton, a campaign worker for a Democratic Presidential candidate, is bored with her job, her life, and her affair with a married journalist. She launches a fictitious Internet diary intended to expose the seamier side of Washington life. When the career of the fake blogger, Capitolette, takes off, the deception comes to light. The situation is rooted, slightly, in real life: as Wonkette, Cox created a scandal when she linked to the blog of a Senate staffer who dished about her sexual escapades. But there's something self-defeating about a roman à clef that deals with people who were pseudonymous in the first place. And the plot's many twists just add more bones to the skeleton rather than fleshing it out.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; First Printing edition (January 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594489017
• ISBN-13: 978-1594489013
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #508,575 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars There is not a dog pun bad enough to do this justice, January 6, 2006

By	T. Atkinson (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Having read an advance copy slipped to me by a confidential publishing source (in the finest traditions of Wonkette herself), the most prominent emotion this novel evokes is disappointment. Cox is a funny and brilliant writer in the short--her Wonkette blog entries are often laugh-out-loud funny--but she doesn't have the stuff to keep the reader's attention page after page through the long haul of a novel. Her characters are, at times, cartoonishly one-dimensional, and they display exactly the emotions you would expect in each predictable situation. Where is the zing, the zip evident in her blog posts? The dialogue is flat, sit-commy in structure, and flows as evenly and naturally as lumpy chili. I was bored with the story halfway through, and by the end was struggling not to make comparisons between this novel and Primary Colors or that god-awful Michale Keaton/Geena Davis film, Speechless.

The most significant disappointment is that Cox goes to the Washingtonienne well again. Cox's site "broke" the story of Jessica Cutler, who blogged about her trysts with staffers and politicos under the name "Washingtonienne" (and who subsequently milked her sexual adventures into a snore-inducing Playboy spread and an utterly forgettable book by the same name). And here Cox relies on that frankly mediocre political-sexual scandal as a significant plot point. The problem is, it feels like a creative crutch. Okay, write what you know, sure. And, yeah, we know, we know, your site broke the story, such that it was, and yeah, okay, we get it already. But to revisit it again instead of striking into original territory is almost inexcusable for a writer of such promise. What is undeniably inexcusable, however, is to give this lame plot point a this-is-so-crazy-it-just-might-work plot construct (get this! she's only pretending to be Washingtonienne, er, whatever, because Washingtonienne is totally made up, har harr!) worthy of a bad "Silver Spoons" episode.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Chick-lit-ey flavor, bad aftertaste., November 18, 2006

By	Pond - See all my reviews

I won't repeat what's already been rehashed in previous reviews, but I just had the feeling that Cox didn't take the time to truly develop her characters and plots. The unique slice-of-life details were interesting but certainly not sufficient enough to sustain this work on its own. The plot wraps up too quickly and too unrealistically in many ways, not the least of which is Melanie's sudden attack of moral conflict. The story begins while she is in the middle of an affair with a married man, which suddenly looks like a bad thing only after her lover gets involved with the scandal at hand (not to mention yet another woman).

Another thing that really irritated me was the whole "Democrats - good, Republicans - bad" dichotomy. Themes should be universal. I think even fellow liberals like me can handle a small dash of neutrality in fiction.

Perhpas the nicest thing I could say about Dog Days is that, at 274 pages, it's a quick read...but brevity, in this case, ain't the soul of wit.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars trite, witless trash, October 10, 2006

By	Risa Mahria - See all my reviews

Bears all the hallmarks of its author's self-congratulatory self-conception: vain, witless vulgarizing, power-celeb worship and sitcommish woodenness posturing as astute "irony" and relevant commentary. Utter garbage.