The Lost Dog
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:7th May '09
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
An impressive, electrifying novel novel by one of Australia's most significant young writers, winner of a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Encore Award for her previous novel, and a major international talent.
A mystery and a love story, an exploration of art and nature, a meditation on ageing and the passage of time. It offers a contemporary novel which examines the weight of history as well as different ways of trying to grasp the world.
Tom Loxley is holed up in a cottage in the bush, trying to finish his book on Henry James, when his dog goes missing, trailing a length of orange twine. As Tom searches it becomes clear that he needs to unravel other puzzles in his life and the story shifts between past and present, taking in his parents' mixed-race marriage in India, their arrival in Australia in the 1970s, Tom's own failed marriage, and his current involvement with Nelly Zhang, an artist with her own secrets and mysteries.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008.
The best novel I have read for a long time....The writing is elegant and subtle, and Michelle de Kretser knows how to construct a gripping story ... new and constantly surprising, without being showy or quirky -- A.S. Byatt * Financial Times *
Reading The Lost Dog one is torn between contradictory urges - to race ahead, in order to find out what happens, and to linger in admiration of de Kretser's ravishing style * New Statesman *
Few writers have de Kretser's confident, meticulous plotting, her strong imagination and her precise, evocative prose. The Lost Dog opens up rich vistas... and introduces the reader to a world beyond its fictional frontiers * The Times *
The Lost Dog showcases a writer as subtly perceptive about feelings as ideas... Behind the troubled affections in this artful, witty but very moving novel, lies the "ghost story" of Australia itself -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
Kretser's native style is clear, vigorous, sensitive to mood and cadence, and strongly narrative - an excellent tool for a novelist with a story to tell. She does have a story to tell, and a good one -- Ursula le Guin * Guardian *
ISBN: 9780099516958
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 19mm
Weight: 213g
304 pages