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Title details for Dog Years by Mark Doty - Available

Dog Years

A Memoir

by Mark Doty
Mark Doty
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails.

Dog Years is a remarkable book: a moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss. Mark Doty writes about the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love. A book unlike any other, Mark Doty's surprising meditation is radiantly unsentimental yet profoundly affecting. Beautifully written, Dog Years is a classic in the making.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    March 13, 2007

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780061262517
      • File size: 179962 KB
      • Duration: 06:14:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In a blend of memoir, literary criticism, and reflections on dogs and death, Mark Doty recounts the making of his human-canine family. As his partner, Wally's, death becomes inevitable, Doty rescues Beau from an animal shelter, believing the golden retriever will ease his pain and become a companion for their aging black retriever, Arden. When Beau becomes ill, caretaking rescues Doty from depression, and Beau and Arden become his anchor to life. Doty's perceptions celebrate canine life forces and the connection that lets human and animals transcend tragedy and keep hope alive. Doty's reading has a singsong quality. At times, this complements the lyrical tone of this work, and other times it becomes too hypnotic. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 12, 2007
      Award-winning memoirist (Firebird
      ) and poet (School of the Arts
      ) Doty explores, with compassion and intelligence, the complicated, loving territory inhabited by devoted dogs and their loyal humans. In 1994, when the author's longtime lover was dying of AIDS, beloved pet Arden kept the surviving partner afloat. A new adoptee, the rambunctious Beau, in his "sloppy dog way," becomes a part of the tribe and carries some of the burden of grief. Doty says Beau "carried something else for me too, which was my will to live." In a time of devastating pain, as well as in happier times, Doty's two dogs are the "secret heroes of my own vitality." The dog characters in the book are irresistible, and the arcs of their lives are delineated with the tenderness and passion of the truly smitten. Arden's quiet nobility and slow decline breaks the heart, while Beau's goofy enthusiasm peaks with youth and mellows in illness. With a marvelous ability to present the pain of mourning with a poet's delicate hand, and an irrepressible instinct for joy, Doty delivers a soulful love story which illuminates no less than the big human mysteries: attachment, death, grief, loyalty, happiness. The book nimbly sidesteps sentimentality and lands squarely on a philosophical, inquisitive tone as intellectually evocative as it is emotionally resonant.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 28, 2007
      Doty brings a mellow, soft-spoken dignity to the narration of his memoir, which chronicles the lives of the distinguished poet and author’s beloved retrievers, Arden and Beau. The narrative thread comes together in the form of essays evoking the joy, tenderness, pain and loss in the compressed canine life spans of the two dogs. The four-legged drama takes shape amid the backdrop of Doty’s human journey of grief and resiliency, particularly in regard to the loss of his longtime partner to AIDS and his subsequent glide into a new romantic relationship. Given Doty’s literary pedigree, it should come as no surprise that he takes a meandering path in the autobiographic story line, pausing frequently to offer philosophical insights. The thoughtful pace and tone of Doty’s audio performance brings to mind the spoken-word journals of NPR’s This American Life
      . Audiences eager to cut to the chase for a classic inspirational dog saga may lose patience, but discerning listeners will appreciate Doty’s perspective. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 12).

    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2014

      Poet and essayist Doty's memoir combines elegy, prose, and criticism to describe the 16 years shared with the two dogs that completed the family he created with his dying partner. His style is complex, formal, and never sentimental as he compares his dogs' decline with the concurrent human losses in his life. (LJ 1/07)

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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