The best dog in the world Essays on love

A collection of essays, brimming with love and sorrow, on our best friends. The best dog in the world, of course, is yours. As editor Hoffman recounts in her introduction, hers was a German shepherd named Houdini that possessed all the magic his name implied, and though he didn't like the man who would become her husband, and later her ex-husband ("He was a good judge of character"), Houdini was a devoted companion to the rest of the household. "If you're very lucky you may be honored to know a once-in-a-lifetime dog," she concludes. That's just right, and other contributors to this volume echo the sentiment in different ways. Writes novelist Emily Henry, "We are so fucking lucky to get to love someone so much that it tears a hole in the world when they're gone." That's just right, too, but there's little pathos here: The contributors are clear-eyed about what Dame Rebecca West called dogs' one flaw, namely that they die. Of course, people do too, and one standout in this collection is Isabel Allende's reminiscence of a normally quiet dog that would go ape whenever the household ghost--naturally, she named her home House of the Spirits--made an appearance. In another affecting piece, Paul Yoon laments the coming day when his beloved dog will no longer walk the earth, and he fears that the day will come after that when "I will begin to erase Oscar, that I will no longer remember the feel of him--his smell, his voice--no longer remember what it was I used to imagine about him as he lay beside me." The conclusion to these varied pieces, in as many words, is fitting: We are lucky to have the time we do with our dogs, and we wouldn't trade a moment of it. A moving tribute to the dogs in our lives, and the good fortune of their companionship. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.