The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Maril... by Andrew O'Hagan

Able to cogitate for hours on the strange proclivities of the humans surrounding him, Maf becomes the companion of one of the most famous women in all of history while still a puppy. You’ve been warned!Įven from his humble beginnings in an English farmhouse, Maf is a very special dog. Apparently she prefers her talking dogs to “sniff their butts” and “chase after dropped potatoe chips.” She is also upset because this talking dog used “words that I don’t know” when as we all know, most talking dog narrators should limit their vocabulary to doglike words such as “woorf” and “owf,” both one syllable, so more realistic for a talking dog.

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Maril... by Andrew O

PS: Tara in her review has complained that this narrator is insufficiently doglike. Note: Monroe obsessives need not apply-this isn’t a barrel-scraping “fresh perspective.”

Told in a light but consistently amusing way with insights on Kafka, Proust and Woolf you wouldn’t expect from an Aviemore maltese, O’Hagan’s short novel is a charming and finely written comedy.

As he accompanies Marilyn in her final year of life, he bumps into Brooklyn rats and soup-flies with attitude problems, all the while observing Marilyn’s airy complexity and her run-ins with Sinatra, her psycho psychologist, Carson McCullers, and JFK. Maf was raised a socialist in the Scottish Highlands, and is extremely au fait with European, American and Russian literature, as well as philosophy and human psychology. To be filed alongside the brightest and funniest animal-narrated fiction (not a competitive field-ha, see the pun?), O’Hagan’s novel is a debonair shaggy dog story (homage to Tristram Shandy evident in the title) that concerns the exploits of a Highland pup, passed into the hands of Vita Sackville-West, Natalie Wood’s princess mother, and finally (via Frank Sinatra) Marilyn Monroe.

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Maril... by Andrew O'Hagan