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Walking the Dog and Other Stories
Walking the Dog and Other Stories
Dec 4, 2025 11:40 AM

Author:Bernard MacLaverty

Walking the Dog and Other Stories

The long-awaited new collection from Bernard MacLaverty examines worlds in collision, relationships fragmenting, innocence face to face with real life, real death. A Catholic schoolboy minding goal has a theological debate with a B-Special; a chess game in Spain is a catalyst for grief and redemption; a Belfast man out walking his dog is kidnapped at gunpoint and told to say his ABC. . .

Interwoven through the book are wry, elliptical 'stories within stories' about fiction and the writing of it, featuring 'your man' -a comically beleaguered alter ego. Acting as foils to the brilliance of the real thing, these very short pieces point up the tough lyricism of MacLaverty's work. As always, his writing is vivid, exact and pellucid, his characters perfectly observed, the surface of the prose deceptively still. It is only once we enter the world of the stories that we begin to make out the huge shapes that move there: loss, love, disappointment, fierce joy.

WALKING THE DOG has been worth waiting for: it is a powerful, honest and moving book by one of the great storytellers of our age.

Reviews

A love story in the very best sense of the phrase...a very good novel as well as an enjoyable one

—— Literary Review

A tense and steamy narrative

—— Times Literary Supplement

A patchwork of pain and longing stitched into a satisfying pattern by Rose Tremain's humour and depth of sympathy

—— Mail on Sunday

The Lightning Keeper is a big, old-fashioned panoramic feast of a novel ... A marvelous story.

—— Philadelphia Inquirer

This is a beautifully crafted book - at once a gripping adventure story and a compelling portrayal of human emotion at its bravest and its most vulnerable

—— Economist

The Colour is the produce of a large and generous talent, generous in its giving of enjoyment

—— Financial Times

An engrossing novel, an adventure story with a sensitive side

—— Observer

The Colour is a measured book, a diligent, painstaking book

—— Sunday Telegraph

She is a magical storyteller - it is as an artist that she excels

—— New Statesman

Brilliantly detailed and textured

—— Daily Mail

Tremain is the finest of historical fiction writers

—— Gloss

It's uncommonly well written, with a bountiful supply of manic energy... Would Paul Auster kill to write a book as playful, fast-paced and unashamedly populist as this? Doubtful, but somewhere there's a "Paul Auster" who might

—— Alastair Mabbott , Herald

Sparky debut

—— Jonathan Barnes , Literary Review

Benedictus takes us on a trail of the contentious highs and lows of the rich and famous in a mixture of dark humour and sharp dialogue. For Benedictus, and his valiant debut novel, more of the same please

—— Ben Bookless , Big Issue

The story of the ultimate celeb after-party, it's a knowing wink at publishing and celebrity culture - a high-concept first novel sitting just the right side of salacious

—— Elle

The Afterparty avoids smugness partly because it has more affection that vitriol for the culture that it mocks... It's very funny, but sad, too... Well-drawn characters, smart dialogue and a canny plot

—— Anthony Cummins , The Times
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