I vowed shortly after the release (or should I say, the unleashing) of “Marley and Me,” that I’d never read a book with a dog on the cover so long as I lived. Unless Jack London wrote it. Then my best friend wrote a book with a dog on the cover. Shit! Sorry Mary, but I had to tear the cover off my reader’s copy, or expose myself as a sham. The author is Mary Guterson, and the book is “Gone to the Dogs,” which St. Martin’s Griffin releases today (and I’ll be amazed if somebody doesn’t snap up the film option inside 30 days).
When part-time Jew and full-time waitress Rena steals her ex-boyfriend’s dog, all manner of trouble ensues, entangling a cast of hilarious and expertly drawn characters in a string of unforgettable scenes, as the story hurtles toward resolution. Though some of the material may be well worn, such as the Jewish mother’s tireless attempts to push her daughter into wedlock, rarely has it been handled with such comic verve. If you’ve ever read Mary’s big brother, David Guterson, fear not, she writes nothing like him–that is, she will not stop her story midstream to describe a pine cone for six paragraphs. On the contrary, readers are likely to consume “Gone to the Dogs” in a single sitting, which may just make it the perfect beach read for summer ’09. As Randy Sue Coburn so aptly put it: “If Saul Bellow and Lucille Ball produced a love child, she would write like Mary Guterson.”
Mary (who, for the record is one of the funniest and most animated writers you’ll ever see in person) kicks off her publicity tour Wednesday the 8th in Seattle at Elliot Bay Book Company at 7:30 pm.
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