They don't talk, they rarely touch, and they turn to their dogs for solace. The characters in Cris Mazza's seventh novel don't represent broken...
more They don't talk, they rarely touch, and they turn to their dogs for solace. The characters in Cris Mazza's seventh novel don't represent broken dreams so much as chronic listlessness. The protagonist, Fanny, a would-be interior designer, "... had only completed one limited-budget job--she'd done over the interior of the little house they rented. She could dimly recall the vigor of that single miraculous day of endless energy." The book's tone--underrated and slightly deprecating--is a harbinger to the novel's action. Why dog people? Mazza, winner of a PEN/Nelson Algren Award and coeditor of Chick-Lit and Chick-Lit 2, also trains and shows her dog, a basis for exploring the dynamics of her characters: a love-starved caterer, a fascist dog trainer, a lesbian dancer, the passive Fanny, and her husband, Morgan, a hopelessly mediocre dancer. People want the wrong people, and this same awkwardness extends to dogs. When the dog trainer expresses her interest in mating a wolf with Fanny's dog, the hapless, joyless mechanics that ensue illustrate the belief that all potential pleasures can be reduced to graphic mechanics.
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