“She’s as strong as an ox, let me tell you. You should see her jump into the Dog.”
This demanded clarification.
“My van. Dog of the North. All I got at the end of the marriage.”
“Really, that’s all you got?”
“What can I say, the woman’s greedy. When she was greedy for me, I liked it.”
I quite enjoyed Elizabeth McKenzie’s last novel (The Portable Veblen), placing it on the more palatable end of the whimsical-to-precious scale, and her latest — The Dog of the North — takes that whimsy and adds on some darker layers that provide a provocative growth-through-pain story arc. McKenzie’s is a really unique voice: the blend of pain and playfulness felt a bit otherworldly, but the specific details anchor the novel in our recognisable reality of love and loss. I’m struggling a bit to capture the tone here, but I think that’s the point: who doesn’t struggle trying to articulate the weirdness of the world and being a human in it? McKenzie succeeds by keeping it weird-but-believable and I’m rounding this 3.5 up to four stars because it suited me fine. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I asked why he called it the Dog of the North; he said his ex had named it in honor of a beloved novel with a similar name. Literary references aside, he said, the name combined two of his favorites, trips north and dogs.
Penny Rush has quit her job and left her failed marriage, and when she receives word that her crotchety old grandmother could use some help sorting out her affairs (and her hoarder home), she’s happy for the diversion and takes the train from Salinas to Santa Barbara. Her grandmother’s accountant, Burt Lampey, picks Penny up from the train station in his sea-green Econoline van (“The Dog of the North”) and the two form a fast friendship that will lead Penny on a series of (mis)adventures, which will eventually lead her to a more authentic life.
Plenty of the whimsical details come from proper names (I still don’t know why the titular van even needed a name) and along the way we meet: Penny’s grandfather’s second wife Doris Roofla Reshnappet (who painted nudes with “porcine trunks and lots of jarring genital detail”); Penny’s biological father Gaspard (with his beady eyes, long, grizzled beard and dreams of hitting it rich with his recipe for Steak in a Trout™); a Pomeranian named Kweecoats (“like Quick Oats but with a French accent”; apparently an inside joke about a mispronunciation of “Quixote''); Penny’s brother-in-law Wilhelmus Janssen (professional soccer player and “reclusive hunk”); and Penny’s childhood pediatrician, Dr. Fountain-Goose (who fortuitously turns up on the same flight to Australia as Penny). And as for the darker material: There are hospitalisations, broken marriages, and a seventy-two hour psych hold; literal skeletons in the closet, being lost at sea, and dangerous infections; selective mutism, sinkholes, and having one’s parents disappear on the other side of the world:
I contemplated the years that had passed since I’d last seen my mother and Hugh, and a familiar lump rose in my throat. My mother and I used to speak nearly every day on the phone, eager as she was to stay connected no matter the distance. Back then it was almost as if nothing had seemed real until she’d heard about it. Was that why nothing had seemed real since?
Penny has not only overcome plenty of personal challenges, but she’s very self-aware about her own personality quirks, noting “I had a trait that worked against me, which was that if I ever received a compliment, a loud roar, like a great fire crackling on a ridge, would fill my ears and the compliment would thus be vaporized,” and “Though I hated to volunteer information without absolute certainty it was of interest to the other person, I went ahead and mentioned that my grandmother didn’t appear to have murdered anyone.” Still, despite starting the novel with so much loss, Penny makes instant connections with Burt and his brother Dale, and we are witness to the wonderful support that she receives from her sister and her grandfather (and her grandmother when she’s in the right mood). Although there are some truly weird happenings, between the specificity of the details (medical, geographical, botanical) and Penny’s going with the flow of uncertain tides, I simply believed this story and can recognise the craft that McKenzie brought to bear in order to make that so. There’s not much deeper here, but the tone and characters worked for me.
