The Dog of the North: A Novel
(Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Elizabeth McKenzie. (2023). The Dog of the North: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.

Elizabeth McKenzie. 2023. The Dog of the North: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.

Elizabeth McKenzie, The Dog of the North: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.

Elizabeth McKenzie. The Dog of the North: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.

OverDrive Product Record

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1. • value: family
2. • value: relationships
3. • value: Friendship
4. • value: literary fiction
5. • value: road trip
6. • value: motherhood
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The Dog of the North

fullDescription

* Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * A New Yorker Best Book of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * Nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction *

“I’m in love with a grieving misfit driving around with a donkey-shaped piñata in an old van held together by duct tape…the great miracle of McKenzie’s writing… is how she manages to transform misery into gentle humor…darkly hilarious.” —The Washington Post

“An addictive read with an ultimately hopeful core that recalls Haruki Murakami, Sayaka Murata, Richard Brautigan, and Miranda July” – Sanjena Sathian, author of Gold Diggers
Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she’s quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails.
 
Elizabeth McKenzie, the National Book Award–nominated author of The Portable Veblen, follows Penny on her quest for a fresh start. There will be a road trip in the Dog of the North, an old van with gingham curtains, a piñata, and stiff brakes. There will be injury and peril. There will be a dog named Kweecoats and two brothers who may share a toupee. There will be questions: Why is a detective investigating her grandmother. What is “the Scintillator”? And can Penny recognize a good thing when it finally comes her way?
 
This slyly humorous, thoroughly winsome novel finds the purpose in life’s curveballs, insisting that even when we are painfully warped by those we love most, we can be brought closer to our truest selves.

reviews

1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     October 1, 2022
     

     Her marriage may be done, her job tossed aside, her mother and stepfather long missing, and her doctor grandmother under investigation, but optimistic Penny still believes in fresh beginnings. That's why she's on a road trip in a lumbering van named Dog of the North, encountering many a twist and turn in her upbeat, offbeat journey. From the author of the Baileys short-listed, National Book Award long-listed The Portable Veblen.

     Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

2. • premium: True
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     January 16, 2023
     A grieving woman navigates a series of misadventures in the endearing and quirky latest from McKenzie (The Portable Veblen). Five years earlier, Penny Rush’s mother and stepfather disappeared while traveling in the Australian outback. When Penny Rush learns her grandmother, known mainly as Dr. Pincer, has threatened her Meals on Wheels delivery person with a gun at her Santa Barbara house, Penny quits her dead-end job and takes the train from Santa Cruz to help keep Pincer safe from the prying eyes at Adult Protective Services. She’s also relieved to have something to get her mind off her missing mother. There, she befriends Pincer’s kooky accountant, Burt Lampey. As Penny arranges for a cleaning crew to fix up Pincer’s house, she gets a call from her grandfather Arlo’s much-younger wife, who complains Arlo is “too old to be of use.” Along the way, Penny gets help from Burt, who drives a van named the Dog of the North and has a Pomeranian called Kweecoats (“like Quick Oats, but with a French accent,” Burt explains). There’s also a trip to Australia, unexpected visits from Penny’s biological father, and the discovery of a skeleton. With the anxious and well-meaning Penny at the helm, McKenzie brings sincerity to the otherwise zany proceedings. This whirlwind tale has heart to spare. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman Literary.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 15, 2023
     This zany and fun novel follows Penny as she romps her way around California in the Dog of the North, an old, inherited van with charming curtains and crap brakes. Fresh off a sad but inevitable divorce, Penny leaves Santa Cruz behind for exciting new ventures while still reeling from the mysterious disappearance of her mother and stepfather in Australia and the more recent (and unrelated) arrest of her grandmother after extremely incriminating evidence was found on her property. McKenzie (The Portable Veblen, 2016) utilizes California's inherently eccentric identity to the advantage of this wild plot. Anything and everything are possible here, like a Pomeranian named Kweecoats (pronounced like "QuickOats," with a French accent). The whims of old men must be managed and an infected stab wound from a potentially rat-kissed brooch monitored. Penny is always sharp, ready for the other shoe to drop, and lovable. This spinning, upside-down roller coaster of a novel is a delightful portrait of the definitive chaos of love and family and perfect for fans of Carl Hiassen and George Saunders.

     COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from January 1, 2023
     When her mad-scientist grandmother waves a gun at Meals on Wheels, Penny Rush is called to Santa Barbara, where her adventures begin. The unattributed epigraph of this book--"For a while I went berserk, and wished it would never end..."--is eventually revealed to be an excerpt from the journal of one of the characters. One suspects it also reflects McKenzie's state of mind while writing this delightful narrative, and it soon becomes relatable for the enchanted reader. Sadly, no matter how many times you try to pause so it won't be over, it still ends--with a decent outcome for its protagonist, thank heaven, because by that time you will be fully in love with Penny, a socially awkward, deeply idiosyncratic misfit with trauma in her past, somewhere on the spectrum between Elizabeth Zott of Lessons in Chemistry and Eleanor Oliphant of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. "In the past twenty-four hours," she says at the outset, "I'd abruptly left my job, burning a bridge that I was happy to cross for the last time, and I'd confronted my husband Sherman: I know all about Bebe Sinatra and the cocaine." She's picked up at the Santa Barbara train station by Burt Lampey, her grandmother Dr. Pincer's accountant, a toup�ed teddy bear of a man who drives a battered Econoline van he calls the Dog of the North. His other dog is a Pomeranian known as Kweecoats, though his collar tag says QUIXOTE, surely a nod to the original picaresque novel of which this is a gleeful descendant. As Dr. Pincer's situation becomes increasingly fraught, Penny's attention is distracted by her grandfather. With his second wife kicking him out of the house, he asks Penny to accompany him to Australia to make one last search for her parents, who disappeared into the Outback five years earlier. Their experiences there will compete in death-defying drama with Penny's childhood memory of being saved from an untimely watery demise by a talking fish. "Are you a grunion?" she asks him, once safe on the beach. "I'm a false grunion. It's all a big mistake," he tells her. "I know what that's like," she replies. McKenzie has created a wonderful addition to the crew of damaged characters beloved by readers, so very endearing and real.

     COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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* Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * A New Yorker Best Book of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * Nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction *

“I’m in love with a grieving misfit driving around with a donkey-shaped piñata in an old van held together by duct tape…the great miracle of McKenzie’s writing… is how she manages to transform misery into gentle humor…darkly hilarious.” —The Washington Post

“An addictive read with an ultimately hopeful core that recalls Haruki Murakami, Sayaka Murata, Richard Brautigan, and Miranda July” – Sanjena Sathian, author of Gold Diggers
Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she’s quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father...

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