Walking the Dog

"The freedom is exhilarating. The disappearance of gates is terrifying." In Walking the Dog by composer, writer and director Elizabeth Swados (My Depression), Carleen Kepper is out on parole from a life sentence she received at age 18. She is now 43, with a dog-walking job in downtown Manhattan.

Before prison, Carleen was Ester Rosenthal, a celebrated multimillionaire artistic prodigy and a spoiled uptown drug addict with a love of theft that escalated to a deadly gang heist of a jeweler's truck. The merciless violence of prison exacerbated her mental illness, and a conjugal visit with her ex-husband resulted in a daughter she doesn't know. While in prison, she was forced to make art for others but eventually found a new calling as a gifted dog trainer. "I stayed in the motion of dogs, and I found a permanent boundary between my hellish impulses and what was good for animals." With the help of a glamorous Hebrew tutor, Carleen begins to connect with her mistrustful 11-year-old daughter, both of them lurching between curiosity and revulsion. Clients attempt to befriend her, an old artist friend insists on reconnecting, and she begins to piece together a new life.

Swados is an eloquent, unsentimental writer with a dry, black sense of humor. She has a sharp eye for human and canine character and an excellent sense of dramatic pacing, moving between Carleen's present and past, developing her relationships, unfolding her memories and delusions, exposing deeply layered emotions. This is a rich, complex novel and may be one of the best of the year. --Sara Catterall

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