Tag: Garth Stein

Traveling Light: A book review.

A beautifully written, soul-stirring account of strife, darkness, hope and, above all, love shared between dog and human.

Gracious, I don’t know where to start! Guess at the beginning.

Which was that a little over a month ago, I received this email:

Dear Paul:

I hope this note finds you well. We were in touch several years about Racing in the Rain, and I wanted to get in touch about another dog-related novel that may be of interest to you and your readers.

I am working with Forge Books to set up a blog tour for Andrea Thalasinos, whose novel Traveling Light hits bookshelves and e-readers on July 16th. Traveling Light is an inspiring story about fate, family, and healing; it also explores the special bond that exists between humans and canines.

All best,
Wiley

—
Wiley Saichek
Marketing/Publicity Director, AuthorsOnTheWeb

Now I well remembered the book Racing in the Rain, writing about it in May 2011 and then a guest post from the author, Garth Stein, in September under the title of A game called Fetch.

Wiley included in his email a “flavour” of Andrea Thalasinos’ novel, as in:

Paula Makaikis is ashamed of her marriage. Driven out of their bedroom by Roger’s compulsive hoarding, she has spent the past ten years sleeping downstairs on her husband’s ratty couch. Distant and uninspired, Paula is more concerned with the robins landing on her office window ledge than her hard-earned position at the university. Until a phone call changes everything.

A homeless Greek man is dying in a Queens hospital and Paula is asked to come and translate. The old man tells her of his beloved dog, Fotis, who bit a police officer when they were separated. Paula has never considered adopting a dog, but she promises the man that she will rescue Fotis and find him a good home. But when Fotis enters her life she finds a companion she can’t live without. Suddenly Paula has a dog, a brand-new Ford Escape, an eight-week leave of absence, and a plan.

So Fotis and Paula begin the longest drive of their lives. In northern Minnesota, something compels her to answer a help-wanted ad for a wildlife rehabilitation center. Soon Paula is holding an eagle in her hands, and the experience leaves her changed forever.

Traveling Light explores what is possible when we cut the ties that hold us down and the heart is free to soar.

Of course, I wanted to read and review Andrea’s book.  Wiley and I agreed that a review published on the 18th July, i.e. today, would be perfect.    However, for reasons not entirely clear, the review copy of the book didn’t arrive until July 10th; just 8 days ago.  That made it too tight for me to read in that time, so I gave the book to Jean for her to read first.

If I tell you that Jean devoured the book and had it finished in three days, you won’t get a better idea than that of how moving and captivating she found it.  At the time of writing this post (9am yesterday) I was already up to page 160.  So the review that follows a little later in today’s post is the combined feelings of Jean and me.

One of the other things that Wiley offered was for Andrea to write a guest post for Learning from Dogs.  That now follows! I checked with Wiley: This is a true account from Andrea. (Trust me, you will be entranced!)

oooOOOooo

Andrea and Panda.
Andrea and Panda.

We’d come up to the edge of a wooden bridge that had almost as much space between the boards as the width of the boards themselves. Snow ordinarily covered the iffy-looking surfaces of such bridges, but the strength March’s early sun had melted clear down to the wood, leaving a full view of the snowy rocks in the creek bed below.

At the time, I didn’t know what my lead dog, Gorky, a red Siberian yearling (tiny in stature by Siberian standards) would do. From a puppy, she’d had more confidence in her furry little toe than I had in my whole body.

The dog positioned the team at the edge of the bridge and paused. She looked around, sniffing the wind, looking to the other side and then down through the slats into the creek bed below. I could tell she was thinking, calculating risks, odds and whether or not she had the moxie to cross. The other six dogs (including her father), were hooked up to the gangline behind her and by the set of their shoulders, their hedging and shirking back in their harnesses I could tell they were nervous.

It was a narrow trail, just wide enough for one dog team. Two more experienced teams were closing in from behind and I wondered what we would do. Rock walls butted up to either side of the trail, making it impossible to either turn around or move off the trail to let the others pass. I’d considered leading my dog team down into the gully, but the drop-off looked steep and as a rookie musher, I didn’t trust my skills to do so safely.

“Fifty bucks says she won’t take it,” the approaching musher called out from behind.

Thinking I’d be out the fifty before I could say boo, Gorky stepped up to the edge. Her body language changed. She’d committed to taking the bridge. As the red dog leaned into her harness, she gave the forward cue. The others fell in line, following her calm, forward gait with no signs of wavering.

After her first step I noticed that not once did Gorky look down, but rather kept her eye on the other side of the bridge as if she were already there.

Whenever I have to make difficult decisions, I think back to this moment. Sometimes I don’t have enough information or am waiting for some cosmic gut-affirmation that never seems to arrive when I need it. But one thing is clear. Like Gorky, once I set my mind on a course of action, I think of her and act.

Who knows if she was scared or not—she never said. The red dog lived to be 15 ½ and taught me more about not second-guessing than any person, place or thing I’ve come across since. Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, it just means you do it anyway.

oooOOOooo

Traveling Light, a novel by Andrea Thalasinos

traveling light

The opening of the book, In The Beginning, more of a prologue than anything else, firmly sets the context. For we read that the heroine of the story, Paula Makaikis, is tipped out of what is a highly unsatisfactory marriage into “the longest drive of her life” by a phone call from Celeste, Paula’s best friend.

The drive comes out of the tragic death of an old Greek man who pleads, in his last few breaths, that Paula takes his dog, Fotis, before the pound puts the dog to sleep.

If I tell you that by page 71, I had been brought to tears on two occasions then you will understand the depth of feeling that Andrea conveys: about life; about love; and the precious nature of a dog called Fotis .

This book, even as a work of fiction, seems to reach out to the reader, well to this reader anyway, with many messages of what life is all about.  Take this for example, from page 104:

Paula few out of the Holland Tunnel into the early colors of the morning. Gas pedal depressed, windows open, her hair blowing, the faster she accelerated the better she felt.  Getting up to eighty, then ninety, she thought maybe the wind would whisk her thoughts away.

Jersey was a blur except for periodic traffic congestion; Pennsylvania went on like a past life.  The faster she drove, the clearer the sense that there was somewhere she needed to be.  It wasn’t California or New York.  It wasn’t a place.  The map was nothing but lines, numbers, destinations.  Wherever she was meant to be, she’d know it when she got there.

How many of us have shaken off our troubles as a dog shakes off water from its coat and ended up coming to a place and knowing that we were at the place we were meant to be!

In many ways, the book is a lovely fairy-tale, right up to the perfect ending.  But in so many other ways the book is a reminder that we only have one life.  Easy to say but less easy to embrace fully with heart and head.  In fact, the book reinforces something that I wrote as a private letter to a family member in consequence of my sister’s recent death.  I will share just a portion of that letter because I sense Andrea Thalasinos would love to see how her book reaches out to her readers.

Be clear about the purpose of life: your life.  Do not put off what brings meaning, truth and happiness.  Not even for a day.  Live your beautiful life now; live it this day.

Thus for both Jean and me, this was the most beautiful of books and both of us have no hesitation in strongly recommending it.

Big thanks to Wiley Saichek for giving Jean and me the opportunity to read Traveling Light.

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Now here’s an offer.

Wiley has offered a free copy of Andrea’s book as a ‘give-away’ from Learning from Dogs.  Here’s the plan.

Would you like to write a story about any aspect of the relationship that dogs can have with humans?

Any length, truth or fiction; it doesn’t matter.  Email your story to me (learningfromdogs (at) gmail (dot) com) to be received by the end of Wednesday, 31st July 2013, Pacific Daylight Time.

Then during the early part of August, I will publish every one received with some mechanism for readers to ‘score’ the stories and the winning author will be sent a free copy of the book.

A game called Fetch!

Today, delighted to offer a guest post from author Garth Stein

Garth Stein and dog!

But first to how this came about.  Way back in June, I was contacted by Wiley Saichek who signed off his email, Marketing Director, Authors On The Web.  To be frank, I hadn’t heard of the organisation before.  Wiley invited me to participate in something he called a Blog Tour on behalf of Garth Stein. It was connected with Garth’s latest book, The Art of Racing in the Rain.

Jeannie had read it some time ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The book had been next to my side of the bed for weeks but, ironically, the demands of my own writing had just got in the way of me reading it.

Anyway, back to the Blog Tour!

Apparently, the ideal was to have the guest post published on Learning from Dogs during the period July 18th to August 1st but I dragged my heels waiting and hoping that the story from Garth could include a picture of Comet.  The picture has not been forthcoming so here it is anyway.  I shall be reviewing Garth’s book The Art of Racing in the Rain as soon as I can get around to reading it.

A Game Called Fetch, by Garth Stein

People often ask me about my dog, Comet.  They want to know if she was the inspiration for Enzo, the dog narrator in my book, The Art of Racing in the Rain (and the young reader version, Racing in the Rain:  My Life as a Dog).  And the answer is, flatly, no.  Enzo is a singular character, I tell them, and has no predecessor.  Comet is goofy and silly, and is very much not Enzo.  But she’s still very smart–in her own Comet way–and has taught me much about the world.

When Comet was just a pup, she hated being left at home; she didn’t like the responsibility of having the house to herself.  She would always get into some mischief:  eat an entire bunch of bananas, for instance (having peeled them first!).  Or claw her way into the pantry looking for cookies.  But one day, she communicated her anxiety in a way that was so clear, so unmistakable, there was no doubt at all as to her feelings.  We went out for a couple of hours, confining her to the kitchen/dining area of our house.  And when we came home, there was a perfectly round, undisturbed puddle of urine on the dining room table.

Now that is a statement.  Message received.  Since that day, whenever we get ready to leave her alone in the house, she willingly–one might saygratefully–finds her crate, curls up, and waits for us to secure the door.

While Comet may not be able to wax eloquently about philosophy and popular culture as Enzo does, she did teach me an important lesson this summer.

Comet loves playing fetch with a tennis ball.  She always has.  And she will run herself into the ground chasing balls, so that my arm gets sore throwing a ball for her with my Chuck-It, and I find myself neglecting my cooking duties, my lawn mowing, my reading, my writing, and even my children…all to throw a tennis ball for Comet.

This summer I purchased a GoDogGo.  It’s a ball launcher with a bucket of tennis balls and a delayed feed, so one can teach one’s dog to play fetch with herself.  A brilliant idea!  The machine spits the ball, the dog fetches it, drops it in the bucket, the machine spits it again.  Ad infinitum.

And so one weekend this summer, I decided to teach Comet how to use this machine so I could do other things that needed doing, like cleaning gutters and grilling chickens.

Well, she got the idea right away.  Launch, fetch, drop.  She was really quite good.  And then I taught her launch, fetch, drop-in-the-bucket, prepare for re-launch.  And she got that, too.

“I have the smartest tennis-ball-dog on the planet,” I thought.  “She picked this up in ten minutes!  Now I can go have an iced tea while she plays fetch with a ball throwing machine.”

But it didn’t work.  As soon as I stepped away, she lost the thread.  Ball launch, ball fetch, ball dropped in the bucket.  Instead, she dropped it next to the bucket and stared at it while the machine ground its ball-throwing wheels in anticipation.

“Come on, Comet,” I said.  “Drop it in the bucket!”

I dropped the ball in the bucket, the launcher launched, Comet fetched, and dropped the ball at my feet.

“In the bucket,” I said.  She wagged, sat and barked and waited for me to drop the ball in the bucket.

I spent two days teaching her how to drop the ball in the bucket by herself.  Sometimes she’d do it for me–so I knew it was possible!–but the moment I stepped away to attend to some other business, she lost her ability to drop the ball in the bucket.  She’d stand over the ball and bark until I came to help her.  It was a miserable time.

As Sunday evening arrived, my wife came outside to see how our training was going.  I expressed to her my frustration.  “She knows what to do,” I said.  “She just won’t do it.”

My wife watched as I put the ball in the bucket and the launcher clicked, ratcheting up its gears.  Comet had gotten to recognize the clicks that meant the ball would soon be launched, and she sunk to her haunches, tail wagging, staring at the launch tube.  And then with a thwack! the ball sailed across the yard and she took off after it, recovered it, dropped it at my feet and barked happily.

“She won’t drop it in the bucket,” I said, bewildered.  “She wants me to drop it in the bucket.”

My wife smiled at me my sympathetically.  “Comet doesn’t want to play fetch with a machine,” she said.  “She wants to play fetch with you.”

And I realized, in my effort to make my life more efficient, in order to multi-task one more thing during a busy day, that playing fetch is not about economy and efficiency.  It’s about playing fetch.

The ball launcher sits in the shed gathering dust these days, but the Chuck-It is always in use.  And while Comet might like to spend every waking hour of every day playing fetch, she realizes that I have to put the ball down at some point to cook dinner or play with my family or write a book.  But she’s okay with that.  Because when we do play fetch together, that’s the only thing we’re doing–we are focused on each other, and that’s what the game is all about.

Racing in the Rain

A dog story for a man.

Thanks to Steve D. from the congregation here in Payson for mentioning this book.  Certainly one for my next Amazon order.

There’s a trailer on YouTube concerning the book, which is summarised as follows,

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.

So who is Garth Stein?  Well, of course, he has his own website, from which may be read,

Garth Stein is the author of the New York Times best selling literary novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain (Harper, 2008). Now published in 23 languages, The Art of Racing in the Rainwas the #1 BookSense selection for June, 2008, the Starbucks spring/summer 2008 book selection, and has been on the IndieBound™ bestseller list since its publication. Stein’s previous novel, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (Soho Press, 2005) won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and was a BookSense Pick in both hardcover and paperback. Raven Stole the Moon (Harper, 2010) was Stein’s first novel. He has also written a full-length play, Brother Jones, and produced a number of award-winning documentaries.

With an M.F.A. in film from Columbia University (1990), Garth worked as a documentary film maker for several years, and directed, produced, or co-produced several award winning films.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Seattle, Garth’s ancestry is diverse: his mother, a native of Alaska, is of Tlingit Indian and Irish descent; his father, a Brooklyn native, is the child of Jewish emigrants from Austria. After spending his childhood in Seattle and then living in New York City for 18 years, Garth returned to Seattle, where he currently lives with his wife, three sons, and their dog, Comet.

There is also an adaptation for young persons,

Have you ever wondered what your dog is thinking?

Meet one funny dog—-Enzo, the lovable mutt who tells this story. Enzo knows he is different from other dogs. Every dog loves to chase cars, but Enzo longs to race them. He learns by watching TV and by listening to his best friend, Denny, an up-and-coming race-car driver, and his daughter, Zoe, his constant companion. Enzo finds that life just like being on the racetrack. For he sees that life, like racing, isn’t simply about going fast. And, by learning the tricks of racing against all odds, he takes on his family’s challenges and emerges a hero. Enzo holds in his heart the dream that Denny will go on to be a racing champion with his daughter right by his side. For theirs is an extraordinary friendship—one that reminds us all to celebrate the triumph of the human (and canine) spirit.

“The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind the other than it is to drive too hard and crash.”

That’s the wisdom of Enzo, a dog with a lot to say about cars and life. When THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN — Garth Stein’s novel about Enzo and his owners — was published in 2008, readers immediately fell in love with Enzo, and the book has been a New York Times bestseller ever since. That’s because, once people finish reading the novel, they want to tell everybody about it.

Here’s a video of about 3 minutes where Garth Stein explains how he came to write the book.

Plus if you want a longer version, then the following is an  interview of Garth with Stacey Cochran on “The Artist’s Craft” on Raleigh Television Network Channel 10.