Red Dog

September 17, 2001
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 Bernières 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 Bernières 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 a useful glossary of "Australianisms."

September 15, 2001
Northwest Australia is vast, inhospitable, and except for wallaroos, kookaburras, and quolls, mostly unoccupied. The people there are tough Aborigines, drifters, and loners; most work in iron and salt mines. They aren't the type you would expect to fall for a red cloud kelpie (an Australian breed of sheepdog) named Tally Ho and known to the locals as Red Dog. But fall they did. A legend of sorts arose about the dog's many escapades, the stories of which de Bernieres, who came across a bronze statue of Tally Ho in Australia in 1998, gathers, fictionalized, in this delightful collection. Like his compatriots, Red Dog was loyal though independent, stubborn, stoic, and hard-living. He had no owner, but a custom of caring for him evolved among his friends, who took him to the vet when he had ticks and after he was shot. De Bernieres has put many miles between the Greek islands of his " Corelli's Mandolin" (1995) and the Latin America of his other novels, and is rapidly establishing himself as a master storyteller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)