The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my (often fruitless – no pun intended) search for books that explore vegetarianism. The Lost Dog doesn’t give details about the foods the characters choose to eat, but it does advance a very definite humane and positive attitude to animals.

Importantly, there’s the lost dog himself. The book is structured into ten chapters charting the ten days Tom spends looking for his canine companion. He searches and worries and loses heart and searches again in a way which reinforces the significance of the dog in his otherwise messy life. In desperation, Tom calls his estranged ex-wife to confess that he has lost the dog. He ponders on the efficacy of telling his mother. But it takes until page 287 of this 342 page novel for de Kretser to write; “ …to love even one animal boundlessly might make it unthinkable to eat any.” She goes on; “When eating out with friends, Tom had noticed the fashion for naming the animal that had supplied a dish. I’ll have the cow. Have you tried the minced pig? An ironic flaunting was at work: I know very well that this food on my plate was once a sentient creature, and that doesn’t bother me. Euphemisms are symptomatic of shame; to avoid them was to deny shame, deflecting it with cool.” (That last part, thinking that meat-eaters are ashamed, is almost Pollyanna-ish of her in my opinion, but then I am in a state of continuous incredulity at the persistence of meat-eating in otherwise thoughtful egalitarian people.)

de Kretser creates Melbourne with great affection, almost nostalgia. She describes the neon signs, graffiti, railway lines, old warehouses ripe for developers with a sense of gloom for what is being forfeited to an increasingly profit-driven world. Her characters see the value, the quirkiness and novelty of recycling. The way they utilise other people’s junk is a critique of our wasteful society. Another issue close to my heart.

What else is the novel about? Art and creativity feature large. Nelly, Tom’s (oblique) love interest, paints pictures and then takes photographs of them, destroys the original painting, and shows the photographs. There’s something here about authenticity, about the reproduced contemporary life.

The writing is beautiful. In an interview on Radio National’s Book Show Robert Dessaix twitters on as only he can about the exceptional way she uses language – and for once I agree with him. Rather than say something is like another thing, for example, de Kretser describes a particularly uptight man as; “an umbrella tightly furled.” You know she is referring to that event known as “9/11” when she writes, almost casually; “On the September night when he stood in a bar with Nelly watching towers sink to their knees…” de Kretser has a way of capturing the quintessential in the everyday.

Quibbles? Well, there is a mystery in the book involving the disappearance of Nelly’s husband, which de Kretser appears to explore almost nonchalantly. I wonder if she thought she needed to include something more plot driven, but in the end it didn’t sustain her interest? The husband himself was a highly unlikely partner for Nelly, unless the point was that she changed greatly after his departure, but that’s never made clear. And, only occasionally, that wonderfully lyrical descriptive talent can come across as too clever by half.

But that’s all very minor. The Lost Dog is a great book by a writer who is growing stronger with each novel.