Greta and the Labrador

THE LITERARY REVIEW: Kevin Jackson’s Greta and the Labrador came as a delightful surprise to me. It’s a poem `in eight fitts’ that imagines what happened to the legendary Greta Garbo when she finally quit Hollywood, which she had graced with her langorous beauty for decades. Jackson’s Garbo wants solitude so much she will go to extraordinary lengths to achieve it. Of course, this is complete fantasy; the plentiful accounts of her later life in articles and biographies tell quite a different story. The book is exquisitely designed and Jo Dalton’s illustrations are a constant joy. Here is a Greta whom no mere human being can satisfy. Countries and cultures bore her to senslessness. Her heart is frozen as a glacier. The, one fortuitous day, she encounters an abandoned black Labrador whom she calls Pikus. She nurses the dog back to health and then she, too, abandons him. But the dog, now utterly devoted to her, refuses to go away and turns up to declare his canine love. They find happiness together at the North Pole, keeping themselves warm and hunting for things to eat. It’s a homage of sorts to Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear and I’m tempted to call it high doggerel, which is in fact a compliment. I shall be giving it to friends this Christmas. PAUL BAILEY