-
Access Our
Most Anticipated
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Memoir
by Mark Doty
Book Reviewed by:When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he brings home Beau, a golden retriever. A moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss.
Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails.
Dog Years is a remarkable work: a moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss. Mark Doty writes about the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love. A book unlike any other, Mark Doty's surprising meditation is radiantly unsentimental yet profoundly affecting. Beautifully written, Dog Years is a classic in the making.
Doty's earnest sincerity and relentless probing at his subject matter will not be to everyone's taste. Inevitably compared to Marley & Me, Dog Years has more in common with The Year of Magical Thinking. Doty offers more than just a simple celebration of the relationship between a man and his dogs, or even between man and dog, delving into the universal themes of life and death, grief and happiness. His style is more philosophical than it is sentimental, merging memoir, poetry and prose into his eulogy for his two dogs...continued
Full Review
(396 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Mark Doty's seven books of
poetry and three books of
nonfiction prose have been
honored with distinctions
including the National Book
Critics Circle Award, the
PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
and, in the United Kingdom, the
T. S. Eliot Prize.
He has
received fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Arts,
the Ingram Merrill Foundation,
and the Dorothy and Lewis B.
Cullman Center for Scholars and
Writers at the New York Public
...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Dog Years, try these:
by Mayumi Inaba
Published 2025
A beloved Japanese modern classic: a meditation on solitude, independence, writing, and life alongside a cat.
by Helen Macdonald
Published 2016
Winner of the 2015 BookBrowse Nonfiction Award
Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator.
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
