On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Dante is a smart Border Collie. Sissy is a sweet Cocker Spaniel. Jonathan is a daydreaming Almost Grown-up who appears to be on the right track to adulthood: New York apartment, ad agency job, college sweetheart now fiance. But appearances, of course, are deceiving. The apartment is an illegal sublet, the job is soul-deadening, the fiance is all wrong for him. Still, it isn’t until Dante and Sissy enter Jonathan’s life that the recent arts school grad begins to question his chosen path. “Jonathan came home one day from work to find the dogs talking about him.”

That’s the first line of Meg Rosoff’s rom-com Jonathan Unleashed (Viking, review copy), but this isn’t a talking dog book. Actually, it would be easier for Jonathan if Dante and Sissy conversed like humans. Then Jonathan would know what’s wrong with the pair of canines left in his keeping while his brother is in Dubai for six months. Because Jonathan is sure the dogs are depressed and dissatisfied with life in New York City. He takes them to see the vet Dr. Clare. Doesn’t she think Dante looks angry? Doesn’t Sissy look sad? The vet, herself a dogowner, assures him his dogs are fine. “Dogs tend towards happiness. That’s why humans choose to live with them.”

But this is Jonathan she’s talking to, and it’s going to take him awhile to realize he’s projecting his own mixed feelings on Dante and Sissy. After all, he’s the kind of guy who can wonder about a clam’s inner emotional life, or who upon meeting a pretty cafe owner immediately envisions their marriage and names their three children. He draws comic books in his head. And then he somehow agrees to having his wedding to Julie live-streamed by a bridal magazine.

All this is fine fodder for a romp of a book, and Rosoff pulls it off, despite some unlikely contrivances and coincidences. Dante and Sissy turn out to be rescue dogs extraordinaire, the kind who save humans from themselves. Ah, who’s a good dog?

Elizabeth Kelly’s engaging The Miracle on Monhegan Island (Norton, digital galley) really is a talking dog book in that it’s ably narrated by a three-year-old Shih Tzu named Ned. He finds himself a member of the wildly dysfunctional Monahan family when black sheep son Spike plucks him from the back seat of a Mercedes and carries him home to Maine as a gift for his 12-year-old son Hally, whom he hasn’t seen in several years.

In short order, Ned is introduced — and introduces us — to Spike’s father Pastor Ragner, who has his own religious sect; his artistic brother Hugh; and to young Hally, whose vision of a Woman in White on the cliffs causes further family upheaval. Pastor Ragner immediately thinks that Hally has seen the Virgin Mary, and uses this news to attract new followers. But Spike is afraid that Hally’s vision signals the onset of the mental illness that afflicted his mother after he was born and is aghast as throngs are drawn to the island. Add in a stalker with murder in mind, and the story becomes darker.

Kelly, however, is an insightful and witty writer — The Last Summer of the Camperdowns is one of my favorites. By having Ned observe and chronicle events, she can explore such weighty issues as family, faith and mental illness with a light touch. Her canine narrator makes for quite a canny tale.