Book Review:
Afterglow (A Dog Memoir) by Eileen Myles
Published by Grove Atlantic, 12th September 2017
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Eileen Myles shared a special bond with her pitbull Rosie, which grew from the moment she chose her from a littler of street puppies until her death sixteen years later. As someone who has not been without a companion dog during my adult life and has been next to many as they passed away, I found Myles' depiction of Rosie being put to sleep very difficult reading.

Worded mainly as streams of consciousness, at times Myles', at others Rosie's, for me, Afterglow could have flowed better if it hadn't jumped around quite so much. As it is, unfortunately, I found it really hard to follow.

There are parts of the book that touch on the surreal, and I'm unsure whether that is the grief talking, a consequence of Myles' spiritual beliefs, or simply the author's particular style. Without spoilers, I cannot say any more. The book seemed to finish a little abruptly, too, but there may be photos in the finished version that may account for this. I feel Afterglow will either be a definite yes or an absolute no with dog lovers.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic for providing an eARC via NetGalley; this is my unbiased review.

#Afterglow #GroveAtlantic #NetGalley #BookReview #ADogMemoir #DogBook

In my opinion, some people are made to read stream of consciousness writings and some aren't. And I think it's only fair to be warned in advance if something is in the stream of consciousness style. It's not my thing, so I really couldn't appreciate the book but certainly, there were moments of beauty and the expression of great love for a pet that I could appreciate.

Though I occasionally had some trouble with the chronology of the book, I really enjoyed reading about Rosie's life and found the section dealing with the end of her life particularly relatable. I came to enjoy the fact that the book was a bit like a collage, mixing and remixing different styles and periods of time.

Well, this one just didn't connect with me. There were moments that I was really with her and moved by where she was headed, but then almost immediately she would lose me again. The prose and structure were more jolting than gripping. While I appreciated some of the moments on grief, loss, and meaning.... Sorry, it's a no from me, dog.

A kaleidoscope indeed. This is quite the book. It moves in time, space, and perspective. It's not about the dog and it is about the dog. Rosie was one lucky canine to have been adopted by Myles, who loved her if not herself. I likely would not have picked this. up if I had not been granted an ARC by Netgalley. I'm glad I read it even if I found it both mystifying and frustrating. Try this for a very different sort of memoir.

I knew I shouldn't have attempted this book. I had to stop once he described Rosie being put to sleep. Nothing good could come from reading a sad story of a dog's death, even if in her life time she'd known happiness.

This is a difficult book. Not just because of the subject matter, but because it's written as one stream of consciousness that wildly jumps around & goes off topic.

Tears from the start! This book is sad from beginning to end and tells various stories from the author's life as they remind her of her dog.who passed away. Do not read this if you have an older dog...

I wish this had been published without the subtitle, or with a more cagey one (like “Notes towards a Dog Memoir” or “A Sort of Dog Memoir”). If what you want is a straightforward dog memoir, read Dog Years by Mark Doty and Ordinary Dogs by Eileen Battersby, both excellent examples of the genre. The time that Myles, known primarily as a poet and queer theorist, had with her pit bull Rosie between 1990 and 2006 is less the substance of this book than a jumping-off point for a jumbled set of reminiscences and imagined scenarios.

Myles sometimes writes as Rosie, and sometimes to Rosie; one particularly unusual chapter has Rosie being interviewed by a puppet. The author milks the god/dog connection for all it’s worth, and suggests (seriously, I think) that Rosie was the reincarnation of her father. The style is playful, sometimes a stream of consciousness with lots of run-on sentences and paragraphs that read like prose poems. As long as the dog was the main subject I was with Myles, but there was so much that seemed extraneous: a trip to Ireland, a lecture on foam (?) given at the San Diego Women’s Center, and extended thoughts about mailmen.

Perhaps if I’d read something else by Myles previously I would have had a better idea of what I was getting into. Enjoyable enough, but weird, and not what I was expecting from the marketing.

[An odd connection from my recent reading: In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson writes, “My feeling is, you should be so lucky to get a pizza in the face from Eileen Myles”.]

Some favorite lines:

She was it. Mainstay of my liturgy for sixteen point five almost seventeen years. She was observed. I was companioned, seen.

To write a book is to dig a hole in eternity.

Gender is an untrustworthy system and at the deepest point its waters are pure myth.

I mean the point is to dissolve categories. Ideas hold things up. Eileen—just write.

The dog has been serving the writer for years, opening up her life and getting her out into the air and onto the beaches and even bringing attractive people into the unattractive life of the writer who often never goes out. And now once she/he, the writer succumbs the dog gives pictures to the writer which the writer transcribes and we are seeing it here.

I went into this with a very open mind. Having finished it, I'm left with very mixed feelings. The author certainly has a wonderful way with words and her affinity for poetry is obvious throughout. I just had some trouble at times keeping up with where she was going and who she was speaking as. Perhaps it's because I'm not familiar with her writing style, but I kept finding myself lost and having to backtrack a bit to figure out what she was talking about. I received an ARC from NetGalley, Grove Press, and the author, for my review.

Eileen Myles is a poet. Afterglow, like most of her other prose work, perches just on the edge of narrative, sliding frequently into the realm of poetry and metaphor. Though billed as a "Dog Memoir" it is much less straightforward than that. Myles' dog, Rosie, is the fulcrum on which this book swings, but really it explores many larger issues of death and dying, the relationship of humans with dogs, and where we all belong in this world.
Afterglow is exactly what you'd expect from Eileen Myles: Hard, truthful, funny, sad, uncomfortable and beautiful.

I would recommend this book to fans of Myles' work, and folks who don't mind a bit of a literary challenge.

Dog lovers be forewarned: Heart-wrenching dog stuff ahead.

I didn't realize this book was so short since the ARC was for Kindle. When I got to the end, I knew I hadn't read that rigorously, and I judged the book differently, as if it was a collection of poems, though it was an experimental poetic memoir of sort. If this was Myles' first book, her readers may not be so generous with the reviews. But, if like me, you've read more of her work, you may be more forgiving and more humored by the audacity and, at times, what may feel like lunacy. Who doesn't experience a sense of lunacy when enduring grief? Grief is maddening. In the beginning of the book, I was deeply connected with the memoir. Being a pet person, and one who does all I can until there is no more left to do, I could relate with how she cared for her 16 year old pit bull. And I wasn't surprised when the father/self connections to alcoholism surfaced because grief tends to create an opening for getting wasted. When the book shifted to the interview with Eileen's childhood puppet asking questions of Rosie the Dead Dog, at first I thought, damn straight, let the dog speak. Then the dog spoke and spoke and spoke until the book ended, and I almost felt like I was played (since I didn't know the ending was near--maybe "page numbers" or that percentage Kindle thing were intentionally left off the galley for the surprise effect, or because of the photos in the book, or it existed but I just didn't see it. Either way: She loved her dog and here's the tribute. Eileen believed her dog was her father reincarnated, so the memoir also was a tribute of sorts to him also. Eileen was lucky her dog was her father. Makes me wonder if a few of my pets were reincarnations of less pleasant people in my life. I didn't learn enough the first time round, so damn it, maybe next time.

I'm conflicted about this book. Parts of it just seem heartless... I've lost beloved pets through the years and my heart still aches when I really think about them. The grief just doesn't seem to be in this book for me. I don't mean to say the author didn't grieve her pet, I am sure she did (I cried for weeks after the loss of each of my pet children). I will finish the book, but just not right now.