Walking the Dog

by Bernard MacLaverty

A collection of short stories by the author of "Cal". The stories examine and describe worlds where disaster has struck, relationships ended and where innocence comes face to face with real life and death.

Genres: Short Stories, Irish Literature, Fiction, Ireland

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast in 1942 and lived there until 1975 when he moved to Scotland with his wife, Madeline, and four children. He has been a Medical Laboratory Technician, a mature student, a teacher of English and, for two years in the mid eighties, Writer-in-Residence at the University of Aberdeen.

After living for a time in Edinburgh and the Isle of Islay he now lives in Glasgow. He is a member of Aosdana in Ireland and is Visiting Writer/Professor at the University of Strathclyde.

Currently he is employed as a teacher of creative writing on a postgraduate course in prose fiction run by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

He has published five collections of short stories and four novels. He has written versions of his fiction for other media - radio plays, television plays, screenplays. Recently he wrote and directed a short film 'Bye-Child'

Reviews

[Georgia Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title story in this collection is worth the whole book. Its action covers the same length of time it takes to read it aloud. About ten minutes. It also has been incorrectly described in some reviews here. You wouldn't want to do that to MacLaverty's face, I don't think. Hosting his visit to Poland, I found him to be as blunt as his writing. He doesn't shy from saying the truth. So, why all the mystery about the dog walker and his abductors? It is part of the terror of course.

That is what puts it up there with the best horror writing. Real horror. How do you stay alive when you don't know which side your abductors are on? And they're trying to trip you up to say which side you are on. Read it in case. Hell, you never know. The information might come in handy one day.

[Peter Allum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicely-crafted short story collection.

Nine substantive short stories alternating with brief anecdotes--often humorous--of a page or two in length. MacLaverty's stories are spare, emotionally taut, and well-crafted. In each, the prevailing mood is established from the outset with well-chosen observations. He is notably successful at everyday conversation--partial sentences, broken ideas, sarcasm, casual cursing, hidden emotions , and occasional outbursts of anger. MacLaverty does not dig into the psychology of his characters, yet their feelings are fairly effectively captured in their speech. Several of the stories relate to the tension between interiority (personal faiths, beliefs, aspirations) and socialization (as a spouse, parent, child, student, religious adherent).

Notwithstanding the very high level of craftsmanship, some false notes emerge. In The Grandmaster, thirteen-year-old Gillian demonstrates a level of intellectual prowess that shocks her working class mother, who doubted her daughter's capacity to find work even in a beauty salon. The premise is good, but the story over-reaches by having Gillian implausibly acquire world-class chess skills, unknown to the mother, based only on weekend matches with her father who lives apart from the mother. And in At the Beach, a couple married 25 years take their first summer beach vacation as a couple after being left as empty nesters when their two daughters holiday separately. The portrait of the husband doesn't seem to ring true. After 25 years of marriage, he develops a surprising new obsession with his wife's sexual history from before they met. And while he is educated enough to quip about Beckett's "We give birth astride the grave", he show little other evidence of an educated background, watching topless sunbathers by day and drinking excessively by night. When short stories rely on building personalities through glimpses of behavior, it is disconcerting when the fragments don't seem to fit together.

[Paul Secor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third of Bernard MacLaverty's books that I've read and it's my least favorite of the three. All of us have good and less good days, and there are worthwhile times to be found in even the less good days. In the same manner, there are good things to be found in a book that I might describe as "less good".
"At the Beach", "The Wake House", and "Just Visiting" are all fine work and worthy additions to Mr. MacLaverty's oeuvre.

In one of my past reviews, I mentioned that I thought that Bernard MacLaverty writes about women very well, and a couple of women who made comments agreed. In "At the Beach" he nails much of the character of the male protagonist:

Sitting with his wife at a clothing-optional beach:
"He had bought a white floppy hat with little or no brim and a pair of sun-glasses in the Supermercado. The glasses gave him greater freedom to look around without noticeably moving his head."

And a bit later:
"It seems to be compulsory not to listen. People all speak at the same time."
"That's because you don't have the faintest idea of what they're saying. Two people from Derry would sound just the same - if you didn't know - if your English..."
"They just seem to interrupt each other all the time."

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only serious reservation about this collection is that it is so short. The stories are very good, from the opening title piece about a man's terrifying encounter with a couple of IRA volunteers to the story ("Just Visiting") about a man visiting his dying friend, an alcoholic and unrepentant Traveler. In between are a number of moving stories and a few pieces of micro-fiction to boot. MacLaverty is probably still best known to American audiences as the author of Cal, a love story set during the height of the Troubles that was made into a feature film starring Helen Mirren and John Lynch. This collection I would certainly recommend to any lover of short fiction, and particularly those fond of Irish literature, though at least one story ("A Foreign Dignitary") is clearly not set in Ireland.

[Hilary Rowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply wonderful. I have long loved the writing of Bernard MacLaverty, how he takes the mundane everyday experience and elevates it through carefully chosen language. Somehow I missed this collection of short stories but when I visited the Seamus Heaney Homeplace and saw it in a recreation of Heaney's study I knew I had to read it.

In this collection MacLaverty brings us face to face with our mortality in various ways, through the eyes of various people and, while death and suffering suffuses every page, the huge joy of living breaks through even stronger. It is essentially a chronicle of hope in trying times

[Stephen reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

The master short story teller..

Beautifully crafted stories shining a light on the minutia of every day life . The interweaving patterns of relationships between families is keenly observed

[Sarah Staunton-lamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bernard maclaverty has a genius for short story telling. This is no exception

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

First rate writer. Wow.

[A. Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title story alone makes the book worth the read, but it isn't all there is. Mac Laverty tucks ten short experiments around his nine stories, and they aren't as much transitions as they are complete breaks between stories. This is a writer I can count on to tell me a story with a fresh note and without cliche.

[Elien · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember only liking the title story when I read this book. The rest of the stories sort of linger as a 'meh' in my memory.

[John Mulholland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great short stories dealing with real feelings and peppered with Irish humor.