It seems like there's a new trend in memoirs: using animals to describe life events. I haven't picked any of them up because I'm neither interested in memoirs nor reading about the horrors of animals dying. As a lifelong pet owner, I have experienced my share of euthanasia. It's not something I desire to bring into my life unnecessarily.
But this does not appear to be a book about dogs. This appears to be a transition story about a transgender person, using the dogs as a frame.
And that reached the fundamental problem I have with memoirs. They are all too self-absorbed. In this First Impression, the author describes having been "attacked" by a dog because she believed the dog could see that she was hiding something. Another dog sighed that it would rather die than live with a transgender woman. Obviously a dog is not aware of silly human gender concepts and wouldn't care about them even if they were. To think otherwise, especially as applied to herself, shows how much time the author only thinking about herself and how she appears to the world. Even dogs aren't seen as their own people, but as mirrors of herself. And that's where I have to leave the story.
But this does not appear to be a book about dogs. This appears to be a transition story about a transgender person, using the dogs as a frame.
And that reached the fundamental problem I have with memoirs. They are all too self-absorbed. In this First Impression, the author describes having been "attacked" by a dog because she believed the dog could see that she was hiding something. Another dog sighed that it would rather die than live with a transgender woman. Obviously a dog is not aware of silly human gender concepts and wouldn't care about them even if they were. To think otherwise, especially as applied to herself, shows how much time the author only thinking about herself and how she appears to the world. Even dogs aren't seen as their own people, but as mirrors of herself. And that's where I have to leave the story.