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How Shall I Tell The Dog?: Last Laughs From The Master (2008)

by Miles Kington(Favorite Author)

3.35 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1846681979 (ISBN13: 9781846681974)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Profile Books

review 1: I read Miles Kington's How Shall I Tell the Dog out loud to my dogs. That is not an exercise in eccentricity (or insanity) but it forces me to slow down and actually hear and enjoy the language. This was the perfect book to read aloud. I could catch his more subtle humor admid the laugh-out-loud humor.Couching his Memento Mori in the form of letters to his agent proposing various books (and responses to already published books) about cancer and death and his observations of life is brilliant. It revealed a man's keen observation of people and events and, although funny, reveals much about his own life, his family and life around him. He truly turns the ordinary memoir on its head and perhaps make us look at ourselves and our feelings about life and death and dying differen... moretly. As far back as when Evelyn Waugh wrote The Loved One, the English have thought we (as Americans) had a strange and perverted view of death and the English a rather more balanced perspective. Miles Kington would do Waugh proud - especially when he takes his father-in-law to see Waugh's son, Auberon, enacting a rather mild farce that would be familiar to readers of Decline & Fall or Vile Bodies.You can give this books all the accolades like heart-warming yet ultimately sad, but even though you are laughing you have to admit that it is searingly honest. I hope I would have Kington's approach to death when it comes time but have I the guts? Do I dare disturb the universe? Kington definitely mixes it up.
review 2: When I told people the basic premise for this book they got a confused look upon their face and then commented on how sad that sounded. What I told them and what I shall tell you are the same thing: this book is not sad. It is witty and joyful. It was just what I personally needed to help me continue coping with my dad's current struggle with lung cancer.Yes, the book is littered with dark humor, the man's dying it's bound to happen. But there is so much clever, biting humor that decorates what could come across as bitterness you're unable to groan or cringe. He faces the issues people try to skirt about with bold-faced openess and then points out how uncomfortable people are with it. He's basically saying, "It's here. Deal with it."It's a fitting style of autobiography for a humorist. And I'm sure it was cathartic for him to write it in his final days. As his wife points out in the afterword, he died doing what he loved. By just the way he writes you can tell writing brought him the most joy. To me, it reiterated the point that I don't know what's going to happen with my dad, and it doesn't matter. What matters is finding joy wherever you can and enjoying life for all the little things it has to offer. Life is short, don't take it so seriously.Rest in peace and laughter Miles. less

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