Sam Savage's first novel, the cult favorite Firmin, might easily have been a one-off. After all, he was 65 when it was published, and he had a history of health problems. Three novels later, Savage is going strong, and The Way of the Dog may be his best book yet.
Aging minor writer and failed artist Harry Nivenson is an often sarcastic commentator on his gentrifying college town: liberal professionals in their bike-riding Spandex, lean jogging females with their "hard-muscled pistons" and the nanny-propelled "double- and even triple-wide strollers that span the sidewalk like threshing machines." He's "an inveterate griper and malcontent" whose "rotting three-story hulk" of a house is his way of "flying the banner of decay" in a neighborhood of new abundance.
Although he has abandoned his family, Harry takes comfort in serving the daily needs of his old dog Roy, who is always "stopping now and then to lift a leg or sniff at something," a routine where "in a larger existential sense I followed him, adapted myself to his life program." When his former artistic mentor and housemate commits suicide, Harry discovers new meaning and value in the paintings left behind. His estranged son and ex-wife return to scrub his neglected living quarters, tend his lawn and provide Zen-like advice along with healthy food. Harry begins to soften and finally replace his sense of himself as one who "lived a long time but accomplished little" to one who "made a pattern of zigzags down the road of life"--much like the romps of his live-in-the-moment canine companion Roy. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.