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(More customer reviews)This is not the kind of book I would normally pick up. The title is not so great. "Dogs of Winter" sounds like a straight-to-video action flick starring Charlie Sheen.
Then you read the back cover copy.
It's about a mystical cove in California. A place surfers talk about in hushed tones. The Devil's Hoof, home to the last great wave. Nobody has ever found it, but many have searched in vain. Until now. When I read that, I thought: okay - it's a surfer version of that over-rated Alex Garland book, "The Beach".
A group made up of two young surfers, a grizzled old photographer, a legendary surfer and a young kid find the cove and decide to make something of it, which riles the local Indian population somewhat. When the kid vanishes beneath one of the great waves, the local Indian population decide to retaliate: the legendary surfer's half-mad wife is abducted and the young surfer, the old photographer and the legendary surfer disappear into the woods roundabout. At which point, it's a case of Alex Garland's "The Beach" meets - what? "Straw Dogs"? "Deliverance"?
I'll tell you. When I started reading I thought: this is a book without surprises.
I only started reading because of a conversation with a friend. We were talking about end-of-year polls, how you can often hear about books and music that passed you by, how you can often pick up a treat that otherwise you might have missed. He told me that he spotted "Dogs of Winter" in one such poll two or more years ago. He told me I should read it and - you know, you feel kind of obligated after that, right?
Recommendation notwithstanding, I approached this book like I'd approach a snake with it's back up.I'll tell you - I'll hold my hands up - I was wrong. This is not in the least like you expect it to be.
The thread of the novel primarily winds itself about three people - Fletcher (the grizzled old photographer I told you about), Kendra (the half-mad wife of the legendary surfer) and a local police guy / mediator called Travis. All of whom are in some way flawed. Fletcher used to be a great photographer but now he is relegated to weddings and drinking in the morning. Kendra has a history of insanity and worries about being her father's daughter, her father being the kind of guy who beat his wife and worked his way in and out of one institution or another. Travis used to be a hell-raiser, and has a reputation as a womaniser, but really he is a failure: two failed marriages and a kid he doesn't really know. When Travis stands out by the sea in the fog with his father, you see two versions of the same old goat.
Kem Nunn frustrates your expectations through deft deflection for the most part. Action occurs off camera. You chance upon the big plot turns after the fact - the reader is wandering about in the woods with all these other people, and you have as much chance as they do to converge upon what happens next. The convergences are not the most important parts of the story.
The weight of the book lies in the spaces between what happened before and what happens next, the still moments as characters watch the sky and regret choices (choices that shaped lives, choices that shaped the action over the previous pages).
"Dogs in Winter" is not a B-movie, straight-to-video action flick. "Dogs in Winter" is about age and the baggage you accumulate as you make your way from Point A to Point B. Towards the end of the book, Travis says:
"A man should have something . . . some thread to the earth, lest he lose even the ground beneath his feet."
That's what all of these people are looking for. (I suppose you'd call it sense: that attempt to articulate and make sense of the larger things - like the effect of the sea upon the lives of those who live by the coast - even though the larger things often refuse articulation.)
Fletcher sums this up:
"It was his hope that these things were so ordered, though there was little foundation for this hope save hope itself."
The people in the book (Hell, the people reading the book) have hopes - frustrated or otherwise - and reading that acts like a congress, part sweet part sour. It's not the kind of book that would normally have caught my eye. Sometimes it's good to know people, good to have books (and ideas and anything else) thrust into your hand, sometimes it's good to be told what to do, because otherwise you'd miss out on the things that might otherwise have passed you by.
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