[b:The Dog of the North|61153742|The Dog of the North|Elizabeth Mckenzie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659403299l/61153742._SY75_.jpg|96040326]Dog of the North had some fine reviews and a Women's Prize nomination, but I found the writing and dialog clunky, although the story buzzed right along and the humor and certainly the Santa Barbara setting reminded me of early Sue Grafton. At the mercy of every character in the book, the protagonist bounces back and forth in her efforts to help everyone and avoid her soon-to-be ex-husband, her cantankerous, creepy father and her erratic mentally challenged grandmother while trying to find her missing parents who disappeared years ago in Australia. Age is well represented in this story with Arlo, the 93-year-old grandpa game to scour the outback with her and avoid his shrewish second wife. There is also a cardiac event and a sinkhole and a mysterious corpse to keep you turning pages, pages which for me were a bit ho hum. ( )

I loved this book....I just want it to keep on going so we see what happens, maybe, with Penny!! Wonderful characters, incredible adventures and happenings....every page was a new surprise. Penny is just a delightful speaker telling this amazing story about everything going on in her life. Definitely fun to read!! ( )

fiction, families, Australia, California ( )

Well that book is stuffed full of quirky characters.

First is Penny, somewhere on the spectrum, finding social situations awkward but also has experienced situations where animals have talked to her, specifically a fish. This was as she floated out to see when she rescued a 'grunion' who turned out to be a 'false grunion' but who she felt was a friend that she could talk to. Fortunately, she was rescued by a ship.

There is Burt Lampey, her grandmother's accountant who wears a toupee that he eventually ditches and gives to his dog to make a nest in. He is very ill but provides Penny with a campervan to stay in whilst she is visiting him and her grandmother. He sees himself as a ladies man and lives in his office. His dog is called Kweecoats although on his collar tag it says Quixote.

Her grandmother must be the most peculiar with dead bodies in the shed and other places around her house. A house so filthy that the cleaning agency who are called in to clean it whilst she is in hospital find 29 dead rats but can't find the gun that she brandished at the meals-on-wheels people. She is Dr Pincer and has a little dementia which can show itself in furious criticising of people and then completely forgetting it happened. I wonder how many grandmothers have stabbed their granddaughters in the leg with a brooch that had rat or mouse pee on it?

The story is told from Penny's point of view, where she has left her job, her soon to be ex-hsband and answered a call to come and help her grandmother but ends up having adventures with travel to try and find her missing parents along with Arlo her grandfather (divorced from Pincer but remarried). There are meals with other people, experiments, visiting family, people becoming ill or arrested whilst Penny works out some of her childhood trauma. She does not fit in but McKenzie shows us that we are all a bit flawed - what is normal, after all?

As this is a quest story with very few wise people to help Penny on her way, it is remarkable that at the end she finds her way through the chaos to hope with family and love and healing the outcome.

I imagine that this book is named after The Dog of the South by Ray Midge. I haven't read it but it is said to be an eventful trip to South America to retrieve his stolen Ford Torino and possibly win his wife back again. There are definite parallels between the books.

This is a funny book with Penny's interior world guiding us through. ( )

3.5 ⭐

Our protagonist, thirty-five-year-old Penny Rush, has a lot on her plate. Her marriage recently fell apart and she is currently unemployed and strapped for cash, but she doesn’t have the time to brood over all of this, given that she has to attend to an issue concerning her grandmother, Dr. Pincer, whose living situation has fallen under the radar of Adult Protective Services. Penny is on her way to her grandmother's house in Santa Barbara, to get it cleaned (Pincer hoards more than rats and jars of weird specimens on her property and won’t make it easy for Penny), with help of her grandmother’s accountant, Burt Lampey with whom she strikes up an easy friendship. But things do not go as planned and what follows is a sequence of (mis)adventures that has Penny jumping from one crisis to another. We follow her as she deals with the situation with her grandmother, finds herself responsible for Burt’s adorable Pomeranian, Kweecoats (a mispronounced version of “Quixote''), embarks on a road trip in Burt’s green van named “Dog of the North” with a donkey-shaped piñata and a weird weapon-like instrument, the “scintillator”, she had to confiscate from her grandmother, travels to Australia with her grandfather Arlo whose second wife would rather have him in a senior care facility than at home, navigates her complicated relationship with her biological father and fights her attraction to Dale, Burt’s attractive younger brother who might be married. At the center of Penny’s troubles is her own family trauma - the disappearance of her mother and stepfather while on a trip in the Australian Outback five years ago. They had emigrated to Australia years ago and Penny’s sister, Margaret is also settled in Australia with her family. Penny has to come to terms with the fact that they are truly gone.

The Dog of the North by Elizabeth Mckenzie is an engaging story full of heart and humor. There is a lot to unpack in this novel. The author touches upon themes of elder care, family trauma, friendship, loss and healing in this quirky and thoroughly entertaining read. However, I would have liked the road trip segment to have been longer because that was what I was expecting. Despite the occasional farfetchedness, this story is one that held my attention. Penny suffers from low self-worth and on occasion, her choices are foolhardy and her decisions are questionable – but her flaws make her real and ultimately she is a character you can sympathize with and root for. As the narrative progresses, we see that the borderline ridiculous situations and people Penny encounter prompts her to pause and reflect on her own life amid all the madness happening all around her. At the heart of this novel is Penny’s journey - emotional and cathartic- that will help Penny reevaluate her own life and priorities. I liked that the author ends the story on a hopeful note instead of making it too neat and thereby, unconvincing. I will say, however, that to fully enjoy this novel, would require the reader to not overthink it and to just go with the flow.

This is my first Elizabeth McKenzie novel and I can’t wait to read more of her work. I paired my reading with the audio narration by Katherine Littrell which enhanced my experience.


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