"The canine psychodrama between Stanley and Sophie makes Britney and Kevin look calm and well-adjusted. As for Chico and Cheeky, the monkeys in this star-crossed story, they're the Heathcliff and Cathy of Bali. The book itself? Positively Proustian." -- Simon Doonan, author of Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You
Description
"I fell in love with a prideful, tense bundle of muscle and sinew that stood seventeen inches high. You would see a small brown dog; I saw perfection."
So begins the story of Kate Jennings's unexpected love affair with two border terriers, first Stanley, then, a few years later, Sophie. A fiercely intelligent writer, an astute observer of people and her surroundings, a recent widow not ready to face her grief, an irascible Australian with no time for indulgent New Yorkers and their pampered pets, Jennings falls hard. She is swept off her feet, stunned by the depth of her love. Her life is suddenly overtaken by Stanley and, when she is seduced into getting him a companion, by the pair of them.
But after several years with her willful yet cherished dogs, Jennings came to the heartrending realization that they needed more than she could give -- and that she must reassess her own life, too. First and foremost, Stanley and Sophie is a book about dogs, understanding them, doing the best by them. It is also a vivid chronicle of Jennings's grief and sadness -- for the loss of a husband, for the city after September 11, for two pigtailed macaques in Bali, for a world going to hell in a handbasket. This is a bittersweet and darkly humorous memoir about the way two rivalrous, demanding, idiosyncratic, exhilarating dogs gave Jennings daily purpose and showed her the way to her own heart.
Reviews
"I devoured this book. Kate Jennings has written a frank and eloquent memoir about her most private and public concerns. This is the story of two terriers who inadvertently mend the author's broken heart. They also change the way she views all living creatures. Jennings travels the world making connections between our pampered pets, pariah dogs, and two charming pigtailed macaques rescued from an Indonesian market. Insights into the myriad ways that animals sustain us spill out of this book. Jennings takes no prisoners. She will make you laugh, cry, and run out to get your own dog a big bone." -- Elizabeth Hess, author of Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human
"Kate Jennings has brought all her human complexity into her feelings for two border terriers. There's nothing sentimental about this wondrous book -- just unsparing truth, a trained eye for detail, and a beautifully clean style. This small book takes us from the East Side of Manhattan to the author's native Australia and on to Bali, but it also ferries us from grief to love to loss and back again to a dual sense of love and loss." -- Edmund White, author of Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel
"Stanley and Sophie is a moving account of how we love and how we mourn: 'the fishhooks in the heart.'" -- Michelle de Kretser, Melbourne Age