The Critic Recommends

We Think the World of You is the only novel of J. R. Ackerly, long the literary editor of the BBC magazine The Listener. Although its themes are those of desire, class, sex and gender, justice and love, its central character is a dog, Evie.

Here is a brief synopsis & I'm quoting from the fly-leaf:

"This powerful short novel, with its extraordinary mixture of acute social realism & dark fantasy...[is] 'a fairy tale for adults.' Frank, the narrator, is a middle-aged civil servant....in love with Johnny, a young, married working-class man with a sweetly easygoing nature." The story shifts from Frank's struggle with Johnny's wife & parents for access to Johnny when he is briefly in prison to "a strange focus in Johnny's dog--a beautiful... German shepherd.... And it is she... who becomes the improbable and undeniable guardian of Frank's inner world."

This is not an "animal story." Before penning this entry I asked Mama to read We Think the World of You. She is definitely anti-animal stories; she resisted all attempts in her youth to read novels, watch television shows or attend films "about animals." Yet she found this subtle, hilarious and ultimately devasting novel about bitterness, longing and the mask of fulfillment a first-rate example of mid-2oth century fiction.

We Think the World of You was adapted as a film staring Alan Bates & Gary Oldman & directed by Colin Gregg; the film is [close to] equally fine in that it captures the humor & subtlety of the original.

I absolutely think the world of this novel. Please take the time to discover it for yourself; it'll be time well spent.

And for more critical insights on books of my choosing, see my post of July 22, 2006, "Good and Evil."