Now in paperback, a wise and moving book about two border terriers and the woman who lost her heart to them.
"If Stanley had been a tad less overbearing and Sophie a tad more submissive, everything would have been fine rather than a roller-coaster of high drama and hurt feelings. The dynamic-part gender, part sibling-was familiar: I'd lived it. How did it come about that I was spending my days adjudicat- ing between two dogs who were acting out the story of my life?"
Award-winning author Kate Jennings is a fiercely intelligent writer, an astute observer of people and her surround- ings, an irascible Australian with no time for indulgent New Yorkers and their pampered pets, and a recent widow not yet ready to face her grief.
Then she meets Stanley, "a tense bundle of muscle and sinew that stood seventeen inches high," and her unexpected love affair began. Swept off her feet and surprised by the depth of her love, Jennings's life is sud- denly overtaken by two border terriers: Stanley, and then a few years later, Sophie. First and foremost, Stanley & Sophie is a book about animals, understanding them, doing the best by them. But it is also a book about the way two rival- rous, demanding, idiosyncratic, exhilarating dogs gave Jennings
daily purpose and showed her the way to her own heart.
Industry Reviews
Stanley and Sophie is a moving account of how we love and how we mourn: 'the fishhooks in the heart.' -- Michelle de Kretser, Melbourne Age
As a memoirist, Jennings is a natural...For border terrier fans and owners...this book will be an unmitigated delight. -- Australian Book Review
I devoured this book. Kate Jennings has written a frank and eloquent memoir about her most private and public concerns. This is the story of two terriers who inadvertently mend the author's broken heart. They also change the way she views all living creatures. Jennings travels the world making connections between our pampered pets, pariah dogs, and two charming pigtailed macaques rescued from an Indonesian market. Insights into the myriad ways that animals sustain us spill out of this book. Jennings takes no prisoners. She will make you laugh, cry, and run out to get your own dog a big bone. -- Elizabeth Hess, author of Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human
Kate Jennings has brought all her human complexity into her feelings for two border terriers. There's nothing sentimental about this wondrous book -- just unsparing truth, a trained eye for detail, and a beautifully clean style. This small book takes us from the East Side of Manhattan to the author's native Australia and on to Bali, but it also ferries us from grief to love to loss and back again to a dual sense of love and loss. -- Edmund White, author of Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel
She is witty and uncompromising in her portrayal of New York's canines and their owners. -- The Sydney Morning Herald
The canine psychodrama between Stanley and Sophie makes Britney and Kevin look calm and well-adjusted. As for Chico and Cheeky, the monkeys in this star-crossed story, they're the Heathcliff and Cathy of Bali. The book itself? Positively Proustian. -- Simon Doonan, author of Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You
