Wardini Book Review: Dog – Rob Perry (Europa Editions, $36.99)

Dog, by Rob Perry (Europa Editions, $36.99)

In this novel, we meet Benjamin Glass, 18, and currently quite alone in the world. He’s been living with his Nan in her caravan by the sea, but Nan is currently in the hospital.

Benjamin works at the supermarket and has mysophobia, a fear of germs, resulting in what appears to be obsessive-compulsive disorder.

His manager, Camille, looks out for him: “At work, when a chicken packet split across the scales of Benjamin’s till and dripped inside the circuitry, Camille had carefully explained to him the importance of venting your negativity.

“While Benjamin spent the best part of forty minutes washing the pink chicken juice from his hands and workspace, Camille expressed that the flow of energy was constant and unerring.”

To release that energy, the pair scream into their coats in a comedic, character-building scene that illustrates the tone of the book; its syntax is simple, but Benjamin is complicated.

The inciting incident of the novel occurs when Benjamin, encouraged by Camille to feel all of the emotions the world has to give, takes a walk along the beach to see a whale that has beached and died.

A beautiful, tiger-striped skinny dog is, strangely, licking the dead whale. Benjamin cannot, for aforementioned reasons, touch this dog but feels some kind of connection with it – it’s alone, possibly abandoned and there’s a kinship.

The story evolves into a comedic but dangerous caper involving a delivery driver by the name of Leonard, a shady character on the hunt for the dog and Benjamin, a boy adrift who has found an anchor and is not prepared to let go.

According to his collar tag, the dog’s name is The Mighty Gary. He is a silent character who says so much with his eyes, with the droplets of water caught in his whiskers, and the way he leans on Benjamin.

The relationship between dog and human is beautiful, with Gary enabling Benjamin to figure out so much that hasn’t made sense to him before.

The peripheral characters of Leonard and Camille are complicated, funny, and beautifully real in their eccentricities. The landscape is all wind-blown beach and small town curtain twitching.

Dog is a deceptively simple, warm and funny story. A lovely tale.