We Think the World of You

by J.R. Ackerley, UPI Editorial Staff, U.P.I. editors (Editor)

This powerful short novel, with its extraordinary mixture of acute social realism and dark fantasy, was described by J. R. Ackerley himself as "a fairy tale for adults." Frank, the narrator, is a middle-aged civil servant, intelligent, acerbic, self-righteous, angry. He is in love with Johnny, a young, married, working-class man with a sweetly easy-going nature. When Johnny is sent to prison for committing a petty theft, Frank gets caught up in a struggle with Johnny's wife and parents for access to him. Their struggle finds a strange focus in Johnny's dog--a beautiful but neglected German shepherd named Evie. And it is she, in the end, who becomes the improbable and undeniable guardian of Frank's inner world.

We Think the World of You is J. R. Ackerley's only novel, and like all his work it is remarkable for its unconventionality and its power to surprise. In his brilliant memoirs My Father and Myself and My Dog Tulip, Ackerley revealed the fantasies that had shaped the facts his life. And in We Think the World of You he tells a subtle, funny, ultimately devastating story about bitterness and desire—and the disappointment that can hide behind a mask of fulfillment. This unforgettable book is one of the outstanding contributions to postwar British fiction, and perhaps its author's finest achievement.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, 20th Century, Gay, Novels, Classics

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Joe Randolph "J. R." Ackerley was a British writer and editor. Starting with the BBC the year after its founding in 1927, he was promoted to literary editor of The Listener, its weekly magazine, where he served for more than two decades.

He published many emerging poets and writers who became influential in Great Britain. He was openly gay, a rarity in his time when homosexuality was forbidden by law and socially ostracized.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had some problems with We Think the World of You—some of which aren't exactly J.R. Ackerley's fault. For one, this is a novel depicting low-class British scum who neglect and sometimes abuse a wonderful German shepherd named Evie. Anyone who knows me even a little will realize I will be bothered by this, even though Ackerley himself and his narrator both love, champion, and celebrate dogs, particularly Evie. Ackerley was a misanthrope devoted to his own dog in real life, apparently, so there is a strong affinity in that respect, but I have to lay my predisposition out on the table: in general, I don't want to read books about imperiled or suffering animals—even if the writing is good (as it is here), even if the point of the work is the defense or celebration of animals, and even if it ends happily ever after (again, as it does here, with respect to the dog at least). This aversion will necessarily color my appreciation of this book.

We Think the World of You tells the story of Frank, an irritable gay man, in a longterm relationship with a married working class man named Johnny, who has just been put in prison at the outset of the novel for theft. Johnny needs someone to take care of his puppy Evie while he's in prison, but Frank, peevishly, refuses. The responsibility then falls to Johnny's parents Millie (a blithe dingbat) and Tom (a cruel old grouch). Also saddled with one of Johnny's kids, Millie and Tom take little interest in Evie—keeping her shut inside all day with little or no attention or love. After Evie charms Frank during a visit, he becomes obsessed with the plight of the dog, trying to rescue her from her fate, but he is regularly blocked in his efforts by Millie, Tom, Johnny's jealous wife Megan, and—to some circumstantial extent—by Johnny himself. Evie is, of course, a barking, put-upon symbol in the lives of these characters, and as such she must suffer neglect, loneliness, and the effects of superfluity in the lives of her 'family' while the ever persistent Frank works for her salvation—and, in so doing, his own.

Postscript: I've just been reading reviews of J.R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip, an autobiographical novel about his own relationship with his German shepherd. According to multiple reviewers, Ackerley becomes obsessed with breeding his dog (twice) and then both times considers drowning the puppies. Fuck you, J.R. Ackerley. If there is a hell, I hope you're in it, you miserable crank.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the beginning of We Think the World of You, Frank, our queer middle-aged narrator, is faced with the reality that his young lover Johnny is being sentenced to a year in Wormwood Scrubs. Johnny is, however, also married and has a child. His 'vile' wife Megan is aware of Johnny's friendship with Frank but doesn't think any more of it. Johnny's family think the world of Frank. Whilst in prison, Frank is order to take care of Johnny's dog, Evie. At first he's incredibly apprehensive, but eventually Evie become an object of obsession to our narrator.

It's an odd plot. The novel, first published in 1960, is viewed as something of a forgotten queer classic, or at least it's being marketed that way. However, this isn't really a queer novel. Yes, Frank and Johnny are lovers, but that really seems beside the point. The novel isn't about queerness. Which in many ways makes it more subversive.

The novel overall is a sometimes comic, sometimes tragic tale of a man and his lover's dog. A strange chapter in British queer fiction. But I must say that I enjoyed it, and its myriad of quirks.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1960, this book is a delicious souffle, which J. R. Ackerley has whipped to perfection. It tells the
hilarious story of the love triangle involving Frank, a buttoned-down civil servant, Johnny, the working class guy he's in love with, and the beautiful, headstrong, Evie. As the story opens, Johnny has been sentenced to a year in jail for breaking and entering, and Frank is worried that this will give Johnny's pregnant wife, Megan, the chance to freeze him out of Johnny's life altogether.

But in the end it's the beautiful Evie that precipitates the final crisis, forcing Frank to go through some painful self-discovery along the way.


Did I mention that Evie is a German shepherd?

[Pascale · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a pity Ackerley only wrote 4 books, since the 2 I've read are among my absolute favorites. I'll give most of the stuff in the NYRB classics series a chance, and this looked like one of their typical quirky picks. There's obvious comic potential in a story that revolves around disputes over the care and ownership of a dog. On the one hand you have the narrator, an educated homosexual who is a bit of a fusspot, and on the other his charming young lover with his working class family. When the young man is sent to gaol, his dog ends up with his mother and step-father. But soon enough his lover, who had initially refused to look after the dog, becomes obsessed with its welfare and puts himself out to make alternative arrangements for Evie. Much haggling and wrangling ensues, and things don't get any simpler once the none-too-bright owner comes out of prison. There's plenty of excellent social satire in this book, and Ackerley does a great job of exposing the condescension of his narrator towards his working class "friends". But that's not the half of it. What Ackerley does brilliantly is to show how blindly we follow our prejudices and passions without any real grasp of our motivations. The paradox of the narrator is that although he is acutely self-conscious and self-aware, he constantly misunderstands what he wants and how he affects others. Of course the dog becomes a substitute for his lover, who is in fact much married and mostly sees him for financial gain. The narrator almost becomes a tragic figure because his quest for love is so obviously doomed to failure, and he knows it. And yet he fights on, valiantly and foolishly, to connect, to engage, to do what, by his lights, is the right thing. Beyond the particulars of his awkward case, Ackerley really illuminates the human condition.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two-thirds of this novel can be off-putting with the narrator's mania for complaints, but stick with it. Everything important happens in the final third, which offers a series of unexpected reversals and pay-offs, plus a strange and stirring conclusion.
4.5 stars

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what the other reviewers find "droll" or "amusing" about this book. A lonely middle aged gay man agonizes for the entire length of the story over the mistreatment of a dog belonging to a working class man he's in love with. Absolutely everyone in the story is ugly or stupid and try their best to prevent him from being happy. In the end he gets the dog but it becomes so territorial of him he is no longer able to socialize. It is especially sad knowing that the story is so very closely related to Ackerly's own life and dog, after the death of which he considered suicide but instead drank himself to death with "oceanic quantities of gin". Interesting mostly for it's descriptions of class in England after the war, for being written by an openly gay author at a time when few were, and for being the longest portrait of an animal I've ever read.

[Troy Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

As novels go, this one is on the short side, a bit more than a novella. Ackerley's writing is often admirable, economic, with passages that aspire to the poetic. 

Unfortunately, the more the story's situation progresses (in its chronically static way), the more frustrating and sadder it becomes. There are hopeful moments (such as they are) but anything resembling a satisfying respite feels out-of-reach. By the time of its conclusion, I wasn't all that sure what I'd felt about what I'd read. 

~ except for mostly feeling empty. 

A sort of throwback to British 'kitchen-sink drama', 'We Think the World of You' (oh, the irony of that!) scours the lives of a tiny cluster of lower-class unfortunates, as seen by the slightly more privileged Frank.

There was a time when Frank and Johnny were lovers. But that was then (only hinted at in retrospect) and this is now.

Now, Johnny is tied masochistically in a marriage to a volatile woman who has given him twin girls, a boy, and another on the way. Johnny is also in prison for housebreaking. (His wife is pregnant again thanks to visits "on compassionate grounds".) Johnny needed money to pay for an Alsatian (he'd had a dog as a kid and missed the experience). The dog (Evie) is now in the 'care' of Johnny's frenzied mother and his rather awful stepfather. 

That's where Frank returns in earnest. He takes to Evie and the feeling is mutual. How could it not be when Evie is grossly neglected at Mum's? But Frank's 'intervention' makes matters somewhat explosive for all concerned, esp. the living-on-their-last-nerves relations.

Ackerley is at his best in describing Frank's infatuation with Evie:

... I had grown old and dull. I had forgotten that life itself was an adventure. [Evie] corrected this. She held the key to what I had lost, the secret of delight. It was a word I had often used, but what did I know of the quality itself, I thought, as I watched her inextinguishable high spirits, her insatiable appetite, not for food, in which she seemed scarcely interested, but for fun, the way she welcomed life like a lover?

But, not having had proper training as a pup, Evie progressively reveals herself to be something of a handful... for anyone but Frank. Still, being a single working man, being also smitten with a fiercely devoted beast has its own set of problems. 

It's only when circumstances allow Frank and Johnny to share Evie more openly that we're reminded we're witnessing a gay love story wistfully past its due date - and that bisexuality has its pitfalls when arrangements (and hearts) are fuzzy. 

There's a flash-forward epilogue. I was hoping for bittersweet - but that's what I get for generally being an optimist.

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an odd little book this is - the rather melodramatic story of the infatuation between a man and a dog.

This feels more like an episode in a wider narrative of which the reader isn't told. We know nothing about the narrator and the nature of his relationship with Johnny, which is the cause of the events described in the book, is only very vaguely hinted at: we assume that they are lovers but it's not clear. In any case none of the characters involved, not even the dog, are likable.

It is a quick and easy read, though, so no harm done.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 5 out of 5]

In books, as in music, recommendations go awry as often as not, even when issued by people one loves and admires. I was plodding through "The Discomfort of Evening", of International Booker Prize fame, when I put it down at p50 and picked up "We Think the World of You" instead, simply because it sat at the top of a pile on my shelves. What a wonderful change. Ackerley sparked my interest where Rijneveld had dulled it; "We Think the World of You" struck me as true to life as "The Discomfort of Evening" had appeared to me contrived. Then again, "We think the World of You" is so polished, so perfectly executed, that it would outshine even really good books.

The class- and age-differentiated same-sex relationship (occupying a grey space between platonic and physical) is definitely more than a narrative device driving the plot's twists and turns, but it is nonetheless not the central relationship in the story: that between one man and the other's dog is! This quirk alone makes the novel one of the most original works I have read in recent years. At the same time the relationship between man and dog is used to illuminate human psychological and social dynamics with so much acumen and fidelity to truth, that the book fully vindicates the claim that really good literature is sometimes worth a thousand academic texts.

Truly a gem of a book that should be more widely known and read.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book today while taking public transportation and I still feel like I'm reeling from it. J.R. Ackerly's "We Think The World Of You" is an intensely touching and also terribly cruel, even brutal in its humor. It's also pretty short. If you have a day or two, I suggest taking it on.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short story about a man’s passion for a dog called ‘Evie’.

Frank, the narrator, is a middle aged civil servant who has a fondness for Johnny, a young, married, working class man with an easy going nature who has been imprisoned for one year for theft. Just prior to being sentenced to a prison term, Johnny purchased a dog, called ‘Evie’. Frank comes to love ‘Evie’ and sees that Johnny’s wife and parents are mistreating ‘Evie’.

An enjoyable, funny and sad novel. Overall an entertaining reading experience. Dog lovers should find this book a satisfying read.

This book was first published in 1960.

[Max Mcgrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

NYRBgold

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simultaneously comic and tragic, this book does an excellent job of capturing that emotion (is there a name for it?) when we are jealous of the attention of others -- especially those with a natural charm, like Johnny, the working class everyman whose stint in prison forces his sometime lover Frank to vie for limited contact and attention with Johnny's family and pregnant wife.

Johnny's dog, Evie -- who he barely gets to know before his trip to prison -- becomes a surrogate for many of the conflicting emotions, and for the things that can't be directly said or talked about. She becomes an object of neglect, compassion, cruelty, and obsession, reflecting the other characters emotions towards Johnny or each other.

Other readers might find it hard to process Frank's bitterness and nastiness throughout the whole affair, and indeed his indifference towards so many elements of Johnny's life (other than his dog) is both hilarious and disturbing. But it also feels genuine -- an example of the irrational behavior we sometimes find ourselves engaging in, when having our emotions returned by the object of our affection becomes our only priority.

I can also forgive some of Frank's bitterness, since he dreams of a domestic life that he could never have in that time and place in history -- the bed he purchased to fit both himself and his lover, or his dreams of running away with him and his dog and living in the country. Reading it now in 2015, it's a reminder the freedom we take for granted in modern day America is not something that always existed, nor something that everyone in the world shares.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

a middle-aged gay man takes care of the irrepressible dog of his working-class lover who's in jail. around this droll premise, acklery brilliantly exposes the pettiness of people, regardless (or precisely because) of their social standing. the dog, which is just as vividly alive as each of this novel's (bipedal) characters, is really only it's lovable catalyst. what makes this work astounding is how it slyly and assuredly it gets darker and funnier. a real snicker of a book.

[Guillermo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bastante raro. Un señor de cierta edad se enamora de la perra de la familia de su protégé que pasa un año en cárcel. Toda esa familia es de brutos y pobres. Maltratan al animal para desesperación de Frank, que además por cariño al joven preso los ayuda en su necesidad.
Y esa es la historia, cómo logra Frank quedarse con la perra contra el egoísmo de los dueños anteriores.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just the right amount of humor to mask the underlying despair.

[Halim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book surprised me in the most wonderful way since I didn’t know anything about it before I started reading it and I totally fell in love with the writing. The writing reminded me of the works of J.D. Salinger and Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground.” The main character is sarcastic, sardonic and often funny; even though he is not very likable at points, you begin to emphasize with him when you see how deep his pain is.

This is certainly Literary Fiction, so there is not much of a plot, but the story revolves around Frank, a lonely middle aged man who is trying to save his lover Johnny’s dog from Johnny’ abusive, working-class family while Johnny serves a one year prison sentence.

This is was a very engaging book about jealousy, unhealthy possessiveness and how meaningless words can be at times, all wrapped around a love story between a lonely man and an abused dog.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frank is not a fully likable character, and not much happens in this fairly short book. It’s a decent story, though, if a bit odd. Frank is a needy, self-centered jerk, but his empathy for (or perhaps just identification with) the half-neglected dog, Evie, keeps him from being a total waste of paper. It also gives him a chance to grow/change/stop whining about himself. What we have in this book isn’t exactly a story arc, but we do have a fairly interesting character arc with Frank.

[Martin Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The daylight hours we spent mostly in the open air. Evie saw to that. And it was borne in upon me that, without perceiving it, I had grown old and dull, I had forgotten that life was an adventure. She corrected this. She held the key to what I had lost, the secret of delight. It was a word I often used, but what did I know of the quality itself, I thought, as I watched her inextinguishable high spirits, her insatiable appetite, not for food, in which she seemed scarcely interested, but for fun, the way she welcomed life like a lover?”

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was mostly entertained by this (sometimes funny) story of a British sugar daddy and his creeping obsession with his imprisoned lover’s dog??? i don’t have super strong feelings about this short novel but i just know Ackerley had a very weird relationship with his dog.

[Jovana · Rating 4 out of 5]

:0

[stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man, what can you say about this book? Ackerley has a mastery of the English language, as you'd expect from authors from England in the first half of the twentieth century to have. But his autobiographical Frank is kind of a jerk. Frank is very snobbish, very classist, and incredibly misogynistic. Old buzzard Tom might have taken a belt to Evie (which of course is unacceptable), but Frank does not even try to hide his contempt for women. Even Johnny's five year old daughters aren't below Frank's contempt except in an aesthetic way. He manages just a few pages about the cousin who lives with him for over a year and is routinely terrorized by the dog. The irony is that Frank eventually gets his due in the end since his life is controlled by exactly the kind of made-up femininity he loathes so much in Evie. I understand loving a dog, I have had pets that I have loved. But for Frank, it seems, it was never really about loving Evie. He even forgot about her for a while during his fight with Millie. His motivation is to con himself into Johnny's life by holding on to the dog. He admits as much in the novel. Does he love the dog? Probably. He certainly doesn't love people. Maybe the biggest twist is that while Frank is bemoaning all of the people who say they "think the world" of this or that he is doing the same things but in a much more heartless way. I have to read one of Ackerley's other books for the same class I read this one for and I'm dreading it now. At least the dog doesn't die, I guess that's why I gave it 2 stars.

[Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

so beautiful and sad. it was incredibly painful to read. initially, I was interested in what would happen between Frank and Johnny, whether Frank would win his struggle with Megan, how Frank and Tom would duke it out. but none of those things happened or mattered. in loving Evie, Frank slowly alienates himself from people, although he also develops an intense understanding, even empathy, for them, while remaining entirely detached. he finds Johnny in a little bar and knows exactly what Johnny and Megan are thinking, how they've fought and how they will reconcile, and how he can use this knowledge to get what he wants - no longer Johnny's company, for Frank has realized that neither he nor Evie nor, in fact, anyone, will ever really matter to Johnny. as Evie frightens everyone away from Frank, he knows that it's happening, and why, just as he knows what his cousin is trying to do when she forces him to discipline Evie (and as he knows that his cousin will capitulate as he did with Johnny and Megan). it's very bleak. for such a short novel, and with such broadly drawn characters, Ackerley succeeds nonetheless in evoking real people whose real problems and real worlds are, as Frank realizes, not as flimsy as they seem to other people.

[Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three-ish - this was a quick and dirty read, and an indulgence. I *loved* Ackerley's deep understanding of the connection between man and dog, and his (very progressive, esp. for the time) ability to show that dogs have distinctive personalities - but at the same time, that animal behaviour is a direct result of a dog's treatment at the hands of humans, and not - as still to this day erroneously believed - a product of some kind of higher, "human-like" cognitive processing.

The book's central point, however, was the sublimation of Frank's unrequited passion for his (married) friend, Johnny, into his devotion to Johnny's dog, Evie. There was such a focus on Evie, and Frank's machinations to make her his own, that this second and in some ways equally important plot-line was given short-shrift. Not that I minded - since I'm all about the doggies, and this is a non-sentimental (and not too, too difficult to bear) story about quite a lovely one.

[Daniel Polansky]

Oooh. Ooo! Really excellent. Frank is an upper class Englishman in love with Joe, a married, working class laborer sent away for housebreaking in London in the 1960s. Through a peculiar series of events Frank becomes obsessed with Joe’s dog, which he tries to look after while Joe is in prison. The novel tilts initially in a sloppy, melodramatic direction (my hackles get up in any book in which a dog is a major character), but this is a feint, and the book soon pivots in distinctly darker directions. It's not that there is a mystery to it exactly, but watching the way in which the small cast of characters develop is too much of a joy to spoil it by giving away much more. It’s beautifully if simply written, and Acklery’s understanding of the human psyche, of our strange jealousies, of the foul underside of love, is really masterful. Strong recommendation.

[Luca · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was interesting to see how a partially concealed gay relationship is remotely mentioned in this novel where all is about the obsession between a man and a dog and between middle class and low class, as well as manipulating people the way every character is capable of.

The scenario is quite promising, and the perverse mechanisms between Frank and Johnny and Megan and Millie and Tom are plainly described or subtly mentioned. Though, I would have expected more (more evolution in the lives of the characters, more facets in their personality, simply more things to happen).

And yes, every character has something which turns out to be deeply annoying (which is intentional, I will not deny it, but the reader is inevitably annoyed).

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

No, no, no, no! This book is awful. Every character except the dog itself is vile. I started to skip about halfway, then more and more as it progressed, and I don't think I missed a thing. How did this tripe get published? I guess it was solidly written, but . . . everyone was so horrible, and prosaic, and stupid, and mean. And it was dull. I read it in a day, but not because it was good, because it was short. This was meant to be a break from Gravity's Rainbow, which is frying my mind, but this has just depressed me.I will give credit to Ackerley for depicting Evie beautifully . . . but the story, the characters, and everything else about the book was shit. Oh yeah, and the blurb on the back from the Glasgow Herald reads " A hugely funny book." No. It's not.

[Sórdido · Rating 4 out of 5]

Egoismo, hipocresía, clasismo... y una perra
A cualquier persona que tenga o haya tenido un le pueden resultar familiares las pasiones y conflictos que provoca la perra Evie entre los personajes de al novela. La historia va mucho más allá y habla de las relaciones clasistas de la Inglaterra de los años 50, de la homosexualidad siempre presente pero nunca declara de forma explicita del protagonista y su equívoca relación con Johnny, de la hipocresia existente en la época, de las lecturas subjetivas y egoistas que el protagonista hace de cualquier hecho,... Una novela interesante y poco conocida que vale la pena recuperar. Además es corta y de facil lectura: se ventila en un par de tardes.

[Iva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ackerley used this, his only novel, as a foundation for his non-fiction book (and an excellent animated movie BTW), My Dog Tulip. As a writer of non-fiction, he is brilliant. He entertains, creates fabulous characters who happen to have existed,and has strong (or strange) relationships/obsessions with dogs. This, however, doesn't work as a novel, but shows his talent for understanding the working class--there is a lot of wonderful dialogue--and of course, dogs. I am so sorry to have read all Ackerley's books because I just might have to re-read them. I'll start with Hindoo Holiday. He is a find.