Spring 2025 newsletter
Dogs often play a memorable role as characters in fiction. Have you noticed?
Elmer in Sue Hincenbergs’s page-turner of a book, The Retirement Plan. Six-Thirty in Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry. Any of the dogs in Louise Penny’s Three Pines series, just to name a few examples.
Dogs in fiction often play a companion character role. Sometimes they are the protagonist’s chief protector. Sometimes, their role is to play a source of goodness in a dark world.
I think all these roles are valid. I’m going to add another one.
Yoodles is the name of the dog in my debut novel, How the Invisible Woman Learned to Fly. I’d call him a major character: he lives with my protagonist Marcie and her son Ip. Yoodles is a source of goodness, a companion for Marcie, and a protector.
But Yoodles plays another important role in the narrative as well. He refills Marcie’s tank.
Let me explain.
Life can be cruel, we all know that. People who should love you, don’t. They repay kindness and love with neglect or even with words or actions intended to wound. People you’ve helped, kick you to the curb after your usefulness has ended. People lie. People don’t care about your contributions or qualifications. People make fun of the way you look, or the way you talk. I could go on, but I’m sure you’ve been there too. In short, life beats you down. How do you build yourself back up?
My main character, Marcie, has been beaten down by life. Her self-confidence is at zero. Her boss doesn’t care about her former accomplishments – he’s slotted her into a diminished position at work and won’t let her contribute outside of that. Her teenage son only talks to Marcie when he needs something. Colleagues make fun of her clothing and the way she looks. At a particularly low point, when her son treats her abominably, Marcie goes to her bedroom, wraps herself around Yoodles and cries herself to sleep - a scene my beta readers have described as raw and almost too difficult to read. But Yoodles helps Marcie find the strength to face another day.
Dogs don’t judge. They’re grateful for even the smallest thing you do for them. They love you unconditionally.
Yoodles refills Marcie’s tank.
Dogs may not be able to form words, but they can communicate quite effectively, thank you very much. And not just around the usual suspects (food, walks, toys). I have found my dogs to be better communicators then many humans I know. It’s what makes them such great fodder for characters in fiction: dogs are fascinating creatures with complex emotional and intellectual lives.
This is also the reason why this blog entry is coming in juuuust under the wire. (I posted it one day before the official start of summer.) It’s not that I’ve been busy; it’s that I’ve been too distracted to focus on my writing, including newsletter content, for extended periods of time.
My dog, Romeo, is lying at my feet as I write this. Romeo nearly died on Easter Monday, when a disc in his spine burst. The fact that he is alive and healthy today is due to two incredible women who knew what was wrong and acted knowledgeably and quickly. I am indebted to Dr Emma Lawrence, and the neurosurgeon who operated on him Dr. Alison Little.
After two months of cautious rehabilitation, Romeo is more or less back to his old self.
Therefore, today, after I post this we’re going to celebrate by doing one of Romeo’s favourite things: sailing. (It’s number three on the favourite activities list after eating and swimming.) It will be a short sail, a test to see how he holds up, but he’ll have the wind in his ears and all kinds of new scents in the wind to sniff. Romeo’s happy place!
P.S. Coming soon: reviews of Sue Hincenbergs’s The Retirement Plan and Jo Piazza’s The Sicilian Inheritance.