About
The Dog of the North Synopsis
The darkly comic new novel from the bestselling, Women’s Prize shortlisted author of The Portable Veblen
Penny Rush has problems. Freshly divorced from her mobile knife-sharpener husband, she has returned home to Santa Barbara to deal with her grandfather, who is being moved into a retirement home by his cruel second wife. Her grandmother, meanwhile, has been found in possession of a sinister sounding weapon called ‘the scintilltor’ and something even worse in her woodshed. Penny’s parents have been missing in the Australian outback for many years now, and so Penny must deal with this spiralling family crisis alone.
Enter The Dog of The North. The Dog of the North is a borrowed van, replete with yellow gingham curtains, wood panelling, a futon, a pinata, clunky brakes and difficult steering. It is also Penny’s getaway car from a failed marriage, a family in crisis and an uncertain future. This darkly, dryly comic novel follows Penny as she sets out in The Dog to find a way through the curveballs life has thrown at her and in doing so, find a way back to herself.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780008561413 |
| Publication date: |
16th March 2023 |
| Author: |
Elizabeth McKenzie |
| Publisher: |
Fourth Estate Ltd an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
319 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
|
| Other Genres: |
|
Press Reviews
Elizabeth McKenzie Press Reviews
'Even funnier, even more romantic than McKenzie's wonderful last, The Portable Veblen. You will be surprised, delighted, and grateful to be aboard The Dog of the North with the admirable Penny Rush as she faces every challenge her wild and crazy family can throw at her.
A book that lifts the spirits.' Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Author
About Elizabeth McKenzie
Elizabeth McKenzie's work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Author photo © Linda Ozaki
Below is a Q&A with this author.
What I’m reading: Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
What I’m listening to: The Dead Sailor Girls, Neil Finn
What I’m watching: The Americans
Favourite word(s): homunculus + pseudo
Favourite song: And Your Bird Can Sing
Your hero – literary or otherwise: Roger Federer
The book you wish you’d written/The book that everyone should read: The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
Writing ritual: lots of coffee, straight backed wooden chair, back to the window, children at school
Best advice ever received: Look for what’s already here.
If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? Fewer heartless jerks.
Think of something beautiful – could we ask you to describe what you see? Hanami, the cherry blossom viewing festivals in Japan.
What’s the most memorable sentence you’ve ever read? One is from the Steegmuller translation of Madame Bovary: “Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
What would you be doing if you weren’t writing? There have been serious secret yearnings for careers in private investigation, airline pilotry, and donkey ranching.
Who would play your main character in a film adaptation of your book: Honeysuckle Weeks? Ellen Page?
Where best do you write? Your study, your kitchen counter, Starbucks? A small cluttered room at the top of the stairs.
More About Elizabeth McKenzie
