Explaining Death to the Dog - Softcover

Perabo, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074754574X ISBN 13: 9780747545743

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2000

Synopsis

A Beverly Hills actor must protect his neighbors from his own father, who has taken up jewel theft in his old age. A bored wife spends all her inheritance at an auction. Two straight-A students murder the school bully. This collection of stories draws on the bizarre and the hilarious.

About this title

Review

Susan Perabo scored a goal that eludes most authors--she succeeded in getting a collection of short stories published in both the US and the UK without first having written and published a novel. This is a rare feat and a testimony to the sheer brilliance of the stories found in Explaining Death to the Dog. Perabo gives glimpses into the secret and bizarre worlds of apparently ordinary individuals and shows how a person's fate can be dictated by the odd kinks in their emotional make-up: "My mother, beside herself with loss, spent 35,000 dollars on lottery tickets in nine months."

She gives us the two kids who know something awful about the death of one of their classmates, the woman who spends all of her mother's legacy on a dress that belonged to Princess Diana, the man who pretends to have amnesia to try to trick his ex-wife back into their failed marriage and the woman who has recently lost a baby and is trying to make her dog understand what has taken place--"After the baby died, I found it imperative that my German Shepherd, Stu, understand and accept the concept of death."

Susan Perabo teaches creative writing at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. Explaining Death to the Dog is one of those books that makes us look at people on the bus in a different way. --Anna Davis

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 074754574X
• ISBN 13: 9780747545743
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192