Paul Auster, Timbuktu, 1999

Mr. Bones is the canine companion of homeless Willy G. Christmas, the rather unhinged son of some Polish immigrants to New York and someone whose dreams exist far beyond the reach of his abilities. Timbuktu is a small marvel of empathetic writing: Auster puts the reader right inside Mr. Bones head and, anthropomorphism notwithstanding, you see the world through his senses, filtered through his panicky and slightly desperate nature as well as his unswerving devotion to the humans who show him love when he needs it. John Berger later did a similar thing with King – viewing homelessness through the eyes of a dog – and although this may not be a typical Auster novel it’s still a very rewarding distraction.  PY

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Mikhail Bulgakov, The Heart of a Dog, 1925

The Heart of a Dog has ingredients that make it a satirical classic, yet it would surely have been funnier still to its intended Russian audience. Bulgakov had constant problems with censors and he never saw publication of The Heart of a Dog in the Soviet Union in his lifetime: he died in 1940 and it was suppressed there until as late as 1987, appearing only a few years before the fall of Soviet Communism. Philip Philipovich, a rich and respected Moscow doctor who specialises in rejuvenation, decides to experiment with some transplant surgery on a stray mongrel known as Sharik with a few body parts from a recently deceased prole, and unwittingly transforms the dog into a poor resemblance of a cultured man. What gives this book its spark is the downtrodden dog’s character, which kicks off and then punctuates the rest of the story very nicely indeed. Bulgakov displayed a splendid sense of fun in this satire on the Russian Revolution, in which the uneducated and common proletariat expected to simply be handed a share of the wealth, and when encapsulated in the character of Sharik they’re also satirised as aspiring – and of course failing – to take on the airs and graces of the bourgeois elite. The doctor’s frequent counter-revolutionary rants are what help this novel endure as a modern and edgy one: right or wrong, Bulgakov gave the reader room to still wish the world was a fairer and more evenly divided place, despite the entrenched imbalance between rich and poor that became the source of his best jokes. A book that can’t be missed by those with a taste for sharp satire.  PY

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Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain, 2008

Being one of those people who sees dogs as having distinct personalities if we only bother to look, this kind of imaginative take on a dog’s point of view is actually the type of book I like to find. Like all dogs, Enzo thinks and feels like a human and he considers this incarnation to be a trial run for being reborn as one. Now at the end of his life and looking back on his time with his Seattle motor racing master Danny, he considers his karmic track record particularly when Danny’s family falls apart after the death of his wife. This is a very likeable book indeed and Enzo’s first person story actually adds to its authentic feel, because Stein’s aim is to put him across as being essentially the same as us and deserving of a human rebirth. Sad in many places but also pretty uplifting, I’ll probably be thinking back to this haunting book for weeks to come.  PY

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Tim Winton, Blueback, 1997

In the waters of the reefs near his Queensland home, 10 year-old Abel Jackson encounters an old grouper, a creature that inspires his sense of wonder and who becomes a ‘friend’ he keeps returning to as he passes through school, university and out into the world as a marine biologist. Blueback is a pearl-like fable for kids and adults; Winton doesn’t put a foot wrong, and he pitches a well-aimed ecological message to wake people up to Australia’s natural heritage that is both taken for granted and casually endangered. A great place to start reading Tim Winton, it reminded me of Peter Benchley’s The Girl of the Sea of Cortez in its intent, only this is far better.  PY

Susan Hillmore, Malaria, 2000

Whereas humanity is often described as a cancer on the planet, Susan Hillmore seems to prefer the analogy of a fever in this not-quite-post-modern descendent of Milton’s Paradise Lost. One of the world’s last surviving baby elephants is separated from its mother and taken to London Zoo as a self-serving political gift from the once-lush fictional island of Mannar, as it collapses into anarchy. The plight of the elephants is symbolic of the all-encompassing decay that seems to grip all characters – arrogant colonials or put-upon locals – all inadequate people, and, it must be said, inadequately sketched-out. Malaria is also only half the story it could have been if it were given a more specific sense of time and place: it has all the feel of being set in a fictional African nation though it is only through the scantest of details that its Asian location later becomes apparent. This was a distraction too far for me, and the dysfunctional setting of this rather uneven story somehow reminds me more of J.G. Ballard than John Brunner, though it really ought to be the other way round.  PY

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