Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs

This is a book about dogs: the love we have for them, and the way that love helps us understand the people we have been.

It’s in the love of dogs, and my love for them, that I can best now take the measure of the child I once was, and the bottomless, unfathomable desires that once haunted me.

There are times when it is hard for me to fully remember that love, which was once so fragile, and so fierce. Sometimes it seems to fade before me, like breath on a mirror.

But I remember the dogs.

In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking piece went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love.

Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman―accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us to pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.

My Review

To say that I am disappointed about this book would be an understatement. I thought this book would be heavily focused on the various dogs that entered Jennifer's life throughout the years. Instead this was more about her family with brief mentions about the dogs.

Not to take away anything from Jennifer or her family. As this is her book and she can tell it how she wants. Yet, I agree with other readers that this book did seem disjointed in the writing and layout of it. It seemed to bounce around. Plus, the biggest factor of the dogs. I can't hardly remember any of the dogs names. Therefore I did not become as closely to them as I wanted. I was hoping to do so as a dog lover. In addition, I thought I might shed some tears. Sadly, this book was not for me.