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In his first work of nonfiction, Zusak, the Australian author of the novels The Book Thief and The Messenger, offers a glimpse of his private life in Sydney, where his family has lived in thrall, as he would tell it, to the parade of highly idiosyncratic animals that have shared their home. Zusak’s daughter, Kitty, “loved all animals” but “especially gravitated to dogs.” When she turned three, Reuben entered their lives, a four-month-old puppy with brindle fur and “just-got-out-of-jail” energy. The first year was idyllic, but when Reuben reached adulthood, he began to have sudden bouts of aggression, just in time for Zusak’s second child to be born, this one a boy. When Reuben lunged at the newborn, Zusak and his wife knew that they were in for trouble. But they also couldn’t abandon their daughter’s best friend, so instead they closely monitored. No one was more surprised than the author when, in 2011, he and his wife acquired a second dog, “blond” and “handsome” Archer, who started out as Zusak’s in-laws’ foster pup. Soon, Archer and Reuben were a “two-dog mafia,” best friends, up to all sort of hijinks, including killing a possum and, later, the family’s cat. The memoir takes a somber turn; Zusak writes in moving detail about Reuben’s battle with cancer and the eventual death of both dogs, a “seismic loss.” The “dogless life” proved too quiet for the family, so less than a year after Archer’s death came Frosty, the star of the book’s epilogue. Zusak is an affable, appealing narrator, prone to digressions. In the final portion of the book, his grief is palpable.
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