Red Dog

Publishers Weekly

The best stories about animals are really stories about the people who form bonds with them, and therein lies the central fault of this extremely slender effort from the celebrated author of Corelli's Mandolin. Apparently, de Berni?res was so taken with a statue of a sheepdog he found in an unnamed town in Australia that he had to uncover the sources that fed the local legend. He transformed them into this picaresque narrative, a series of tall tales, written in a self-consciously folksy style about the animal known variously as Red Dog, Tally Ho and Bluey. Because de Berni?res anthropomorphizes him, Red Dog comes across as all too human, while the people who know and love him are mere stick figures; the author acknowledges he "invented" them and it shows. While the dog does possess an uncanny ability to make his wants and needs known (more probably, it's the uncanny predilection for humans to interpret the dog's various "communications"), these tall tales simply aren't tall enough. To be effective, the anecdotes that make up the book should be surprising, amazing or at the very least delightful, but Red Dog's adventures are mundane. The dog is clearly meant to evoke the pioneering Australian's conception of himself: independent, resourceful, footloose and stubborn. Red Dog is also prone to aggressive flatulence, presumably not an element of the Australian character. No doubt there was an Australian sheepdog that was well-loved by a circle that transcended a single family or even a town, but it's a stretch to turn that idea into a book, even one as slight as this one. Dog lovers might bite, but other readers should beware. The book is charmingly illustrated by Alan Baker, and includes auseful glossary of "Australianisms." (Sept.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

De Bernieres's first book since his immensely popular fourth novel, Corelli's Mandolin (1994), is a slender collection of 15 brief interrelated tales about a legendary mutt (1971-79) who became the beloved honorary "mate" of laborers in the salt- and iron-works of northwestern coastal Australia. Variously named "Tally," "Red Dog," and "Bluey," he's a "Red Cloud kelpie, a fine old Australian breed of sheepdog" renowned for his restlessness, voracious appetite and libido, and quite remarkable flatulence. De Bernieres recounts a series of only mildly interesting adventures in which Red Dog roams the countryside and "bush" ("hitching rides" in vehicles whose engine noises he memorizes), bonds with a half-Maori bus driver named John, who becomes the vagrant canine's de facto master (until he dies of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident), and with other smitten humans, hooks up with the equally ornery "Red Cat" (a feline brawler who becomes Red Dog's unlikely friend), and circumvents the disapproval of Aussie animal-haters everywhere. The story has some charm, but it's awfully slack, its paragraphs swollen by pointless filler (Red Dog's women friends "shopped for souvenirs, but didn't find anything that they really liked," etc.). The dog himself ("this obstinate, valiant soul who seemed such a typical Western Australian") has an appealing grittiness, but the adults who adore him are, to varying degrees, generic and/or moronic-and the critter's demise provokes a protracted volley of sentimental farewells as fulsome as those that accompanied the passing of Dickens's Little Nell. The thousands of readers who loved Corelli's Mandolin have waited impatiently for its author's next novel, soone understands why this innocuous little non-book was published. But why was it written?