Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘Etna,’ by Paul Yoon

0:00If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Haley Bailey. With YouTube Premium, I get ad-free videos, offline downloads, background play, and so much more. So try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com-premium. Try out eligibility fairies, term supply, cancel anytime. Do you have your drinks and snacks ready, everyone? Good, because it is time for Book Club. Hello, and welcome to the Book Review from the New York Times. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review and the host of the Book Review Book Club. And today, I'm with Liz Egan. I'm a writer at the Book Review. And Scott Heller. I'm the features editor at the Book Review. Liz Scott, thank you for joining us. From the jump, I have a big question. How do you feel about dogs? Oh, MJ, this is complicated for me. Why? It's very complicated. Well, I had a very complicated and chaotic beast named Fig Newton

1:00who died about two years ago and I swore, swore, swore, I would never get another dog. And I am now about to be the mom of a puppy. What's a puppy's name? That is a matter of some debate. I don't know that I feel comfortable revealing it. Although I will say I'm pulling for Carmella Soprano, much to my husband's chagrin. Incredible name. Yes. Incredible name. What about you, Scott? How do you feel about dogs? I'm learning to like dogs, but I'm actually living through some anxiety right now because I'm about to hand my dog over to a dog sitter for two weeks. And I'm worried, but I'm worried for her. MJ, are you a dog person? I am a dog person. I have to catch just because of the realities of living in the city. But I also love dogs. But I wanted to ask this question because this week we're talking about a book, anchored to a dog. This week for Book Club, we are reading and discussing Etna by Paul Yoon.

2:00It's a war story, but told from a dog's point of view. But before we dig into the novel itself, I have my typical admin notes. First, there will be spoilers in this episode. But we want to keep this conversation accessible to all. So we'll keep the first half of the discussion spoiler light. We'll talk about some foundational details. We'll talk about themes. We'll talk about our opinions. But we will save the big reveals and the discussion of the second half of the book to the second half of the conversation, which will be spoiler-filled. So choose your own adventure based on what you want to know. First half spoiler light, second half spoiler-filled. That's note number one. Note number two. At the end of the episode, we will reveal our October book. So stay with us to the end to find out what we're reading next. And without further ado, let's dive into the dog house. Let's dive into the book. Let's dive into Etna. To get us started, can someone give us a synopsis and introduction? What is this book? I can do it. Thank you. Let's see. Etna, the plot isn't the point of Etna,

3:01but I'll tell you what the plot is briefly. And then we can go from there. Etna, the title character is a 67-pound shepherd, a combat dog trained for war, and this plot of the book, we meet Etna, and we follow Etna both during war time and especially after in the aftermath of war. We don't know much detail about the war. We don't even know quite where it is. We just know that American troops are sort of arriving. And we know that Etna both can understand and kind of talk. And that makes this a very special experience. Over the course of the story, we meet soldiers, and then we kind of see the aftermath of a war that's pretty quite brutal. And we end up inside the head of a dog, and all it I want to do is go home. And it sounds, treakly, and it sounds kind of goofy. And yet for me, it was absolutely beautiful.

4:02Yeah. This book totally worked for me, and I'll tell you more about why, but I think that covers the plot, right? Is that good, is that enough detail? Yes. And I would like to add that I loved this book too. And one of the reasons was because Scott recommended it to me. And of all of our colleagues at the New York Times Book Review, Scott Heller is the least likely person to recommend a book about a courageous and also very sensitive dog who is dying to go home. I own it. I know. I just liked it. It was it was so out of character for you that I just, I felt like I had a window into your soul as I was reading this book. And he's loving it. I am I am shedding that window now. But yes, I like that. It's enough. It's about a dog, but it's about Scott and his soul. That's what it really is. It's just if anyone is likely to recommend a book about an animal with a lot of feelings, it's it's probably me. Might well be. Yeah. I but yeah, I loved it.

5:04I did have some complaints, of course, because we do work at the book review, but we'll get to that later. But Liz, you also had like a little top line this tag you had for this book. Can you tell us what it is? Well, of course, this was the summer of the Odyssey. You could not get away from it. I've still haven't seen it. Wait, what? I still haven't seen it. I haven't even. I know I'm a busy woman. What is happening in the suit? I've seen it too much. I've not really seen it twice. And I don't even watch movie. I mean, I don't mean to be this person, but I read the book. I I loved the book even as a 13 year old. It was kind of over my head, but I had a really good teacher. Who taught it to me shout out to Sister Marlene Barnett. Really a fabulous teacher. And I will see it. But Etna is a mini Odyssey. It's a much faster read. Let's put it that way. And that is kind of how I thought of it. We're following Etna through this unnamed world, which I have to admit. The entire time I was reading it, I thought it was Kosovo. I don't know why.

6:04I have no idea why I thought that. But anyway, MJ, what drew you to it? Did you like it, MJ? I did. Well, so I did really, really like this book in ways that I was surprised by. Because I love dogs. I do not typically like books, narrate it from animal perspectives. That's because I feel like frequently that shift is to you. It becomes a very tweet. Scott, you said, treacle, it could be. Like, I feel like it's you see the world from an animal's eyes and they don't understand how the world works. And so it's very simplified. It makes me think of the word like, doggo's something about it. So cringing. The only thing worse is a book from the perspective of a very young child. Yes, exactly. The worst. And it's like, oh, this is how humans live. But we don't understand that. And actually, why do we do this at all? And sometimes the perspective shift can simplify.

7:04I feel like this book didn't do that. We get a perspective shift, but it's instead to have us look a new, it's a complicating perspective shift rather than a simplifying perspective shift. And it just got totally lost in atness story and in the Odyssey home. And in the pros of it all, we'll dig into that. But it's told in the spare sweeping pros that feels almost like poetry at times. Absolutely. I was really, I was really drawn in. But that's me. You've both mentioned that you really like this book. I want to know why. How did you approach this book? What one you over? Give me your top line about Etna. Paul Eunice Wright, I had heard about, but it never read. And the premise sounded, it sounded gimmicky perhaps. But I came at it with an open mind, and I relatively recently have adopted a dog. And this book completely went past my head and right to my heart.

8:09And it doesn't usually happen. But when it happens, it's really, really feels good. Why did I do that, though? Let's do it. Let's open it. I mean, it's almost hard to kind of deconstruct or explain. I think it's something about the quietness of the language, the sadness of the story. And yet there's like a kind of like a filament of hope always in Etna's character. It's a weird thing because I can't even find adjectives to describe the character and why he carries you along. And you root for him, but it never turns into a simple kind of cheesy celebration of life. Of life. Well, it is a celebration of life. It is. But it doesn't, it doesn't devolve into Hallmark channel. Good, good one. Thank you, Liz. Thank you. Tell me more. Yes. Why, why, what prevents it from devolving? Well, I want to go back to what you said about the fact that the book is spare and sweeping,

9:14which is a very rare quality. Yeah, those are typically like antennas. Yes, usually sweeping to me means dense and covers a lot of pages and territory. Now, this book covers a lot of ground, obviously. Etna is a wanderer and he is going all over this unnamed country that might be Kosovo. Over years, I mean, we're sort of following years. Yeah, so very subtle that way. There is that sweep, but it has the sparingness of the kind of poetry that I like, almost like an e-coming simplicity to it. It's not, it's not hard to understand. I listened to the audio book as I am want to do and it's read by a guy named Shreeder Thomas, who I'm not familiar with. I've never heard of him before. It's only two hours and 27 minutes. Really short. Wow, that is short. It has a plane flight. And you, you still feel like you've traveled really far and you're, you're with Etna as he acquires these battle scars and his body changes.

10:19You see him go from a puppy to, you know, an old dude and and really suffer along the way. And so a lot of life is crammed into that short amount of time. And also it's, this is an obvious thing to say. It's not really about a dog. It's about war and it's about finding your way home and know what your thoughts are MJ. I just wanted to add a little bit more of the setup in this synopsis is that we're following Etna as he tries to get home and the structure of the book is very, very episodic. We see very quickly in the start of the book, Etna is born, Etna goes to war or Etna is recruited for war and trained. We don't really get the war at all. This is a book entirely of aftermath. And after the war, Etna sees that his soldiers are celebrating and he realizes I just want to go home. And so he slinks out into the night. I think a soldier says he looks like a zombie. He looks like he's barely alive. And that happens in what like the first like 10, 15 pages.

11:23And then the rest of the book is just these episodes and adventures as Etna tries to get home. And the structure of the book goes field. You see Etna in this adventure and this field trying to get to the next destination. The next destination is city. And so we see Etna have an episode in the city. And then we go from there. And so almost like the Odyssey, Odysseus hopping from island to island, we see Etna hopping from destination to destination, meeting various survivors and what their experiences are like after the war. And having a vague memory of a coastline and that's where it wants to end up again. But it's sort of evanescent or it's sort of evaporating. There's hints of what he wants to get to, but he can't really put it into all that many words. And he's also operating and I was always struck by this. It's like it's the book's experience that ground level. And I thought that that was really, really special about it. I didn't even think about that. You see all the muck on the ground and all the little animals.

12:26The little animals and there's reference to sort of the cosmos and the stars and the sky. But it's always as reflected in like these kind of crummy puddles on the ground. And I thought that was it really oriented me to be with the character. The other thing and this is really for me, particularly, is I have a not a good sense of smell. And the world of smell is kind of like a foreign country to me sometimes. And this book is all about smell and all unites beautifully about smell, I think. And even the smell of dead bodies really, he spares you no detail. No, definitely. And but if that's one of the strengths, I think is that there's like a juxtaposition of of kind of horror and beauty and it often happens around smell where Edna will be perceiving or looking at one thing but smell another and they're happening at the same time and you're realizing that they're sort of like it's all happening at once. This is why I like the book too.

13:26I mentioned before like frequently animal narrators are meant to simplify. And here as evidenced by smell, now we have a new way of perceiving. We have new senses that we're tapping in. You mentioned the ground level scale is different. Yes. But the thematic concerns isn't, isn't it's not dumped down. It's not childish. It's not trying to. And we see Edna's understanding on a, Edna has a human level understanding of the world. It's not like we're trying to like say like what are the, how what are the seven words we can use that a dog might understand to describe all of this? It's the opposite and we get to experience the horrors and a different sense but not necessarily in a simplified way. Like how do you describe it in this personality? I feel like I have such a hard time with that and that's kind of what I like about it. I would say that's such a good question. I would say optimistic but realistic. Yeah. A little bit jaded, a little bit cynical.

14:29How could he not be? He has seen, I actually have a little tiny passage. I'd love to read that helps with the setup. This is a pro quote show. Oh good. Okay. Okay. Well, I'll, yeah, that's, that's what I thought of his personality. But I'll read this. It's really just two sentences and it gives you a sense if you haven't read the book of what you're in for and what he survived. We walked and ran and tracked and rode in trucks and jumped through open and broken windows and we climbed and ascended and we lived almost every day with explosions and gunfire and houses falling and buildings falling and animals running and everywhere fire and bodies on fire and the earth breaking and breaking deeper. We lost men. We lost dogs. We met up with more men and their dogs from other units and we worked and traveled and fought and killed. That's the end of the quote. But even against the backdrop of that true sense of disaster,

15:30you still see Etna noticing beauty and making connections with these other animals along the way. And I have some thoughts about the other animals but we'll get to it. What a teaser. I know. We're going to continue on but first let's take a quick break. Support for this podcast comes from the new book Stay Calm by David Booth. Available now at staycominvesting.com. Hi, I'm David Booth. For more than 50 years, I've worked in financial markets. Investing is like so many things in life. Small, faithful steps compound more powerfully than most people anticipate, especially when given enough time. I wrote the book because I'd like to have people feel calmer and more confident about investing. Discover how science-based investing can help you live better and feel better along the way at staycominvesting.com. That's staycominvesting.com. If you're a parent of a teen or have teens in your life, it can be hard to figure out the right

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17:34Find your perfect writing companion at momblanc.com. And we're back. This is the Book Review. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm with Scott Heller and Liz Egan and we're talking about Etna by Paul Yoon. Before we continue our conversation, though, I wanted to share some reviews from our community online. Right now, we have up in article headline book club read Etna by Paul Yoon with the book review readers from all over are sharing their thoughts about the book there. Here are a few comments I loved. JD from Charlotte's Feel Rights. I immediately considered Etna a personal masterpiece. John from Louisville says, had Yoon made Etna a human protagonist, I don't think the novel would have had the same emotional impact. As people, we've become accustomed to the cruelty we inflict on each other, but place a dog in jeopardy and we're instantly empathetic.

18:35Dogs demand so little of us yet love us so thoroughly. Perhaps it's our guilt over that imbalance that we've become so involved in Etna's fate. Etna is a good dog and we won't get humans worthy of his affection. I love that. And then last but not least, a reader posting as just the name across the pond from Europe, right? This is the best book I have read all year and maybe in the last few. I cried often and yet closed this book feeling comforted. It's a book that allows us to be fragile and vulnerable to accept that those things are a part of human life and yet continue to move forward. As the beautiful summer rule so wonderfully reminds us, we are strong. We may sometimes be broken, lost, confused, exhausted, grieved, but we are strong. I will be thinking about this book for a long time. So those are just a few comments. There are many, many more online. So please keep up the conversation. But now let's go back to our discussion in the studio.

19:35One thing I'm curious about is before we get to those other animals, the idea here is that by placing this war story in a dog's point of view and a dog's perspective, we can see war in a new way. Both the senses of war but understand the ideas of war. For you, was that effective? What did you think this book was trying to say overall? The dog's perspective is the approach. How do you understand the mission, the point of view of the story? I think seeing it through the eyes of an animal close to the ground is to realize the pointlessness of it all. He doesn't really, even though he gives the battle his all, he has no idea what the stakes are. He doesn't know what the humans leading him are out to accomplish. He just sees the land be destroyed, the people be displaced, the animals and the humans

20:42suffering in huge ways. And that to me is a pretty powerful statement about war. And I thought it was a really wise choice not to name the place or to spell out the conflict. Scott, what did you think? I also thought that he's killer too. He's trained to kill and he knows what his tasks are or he can't choose anything but what he was trained to do. But at the same time, he saw his in-war, he's trained to kill. He can't fight if he needs, but his job is to sniff out my, which is a protective. It's to protect. Yes, no, that is a good point. Scott, you were saying the way this book unblocked ideas of war, what were those ideas for you that you were paying attention to in the book? It reminds you how much you have to kind of operate on instinct in wartime and that's true of human beings and animals both. And so it also means that you have to, you know, it reminds you that you have to sort of fight for

21:49little moments of joy, whether it's a bread crust on the floor or whether it's overhearing a conversation that reminds you that there's still humanity in the world. I mean, that's the idea of this, the world, the aftermath that is kind of wandering through. It's both blasted and kind of half dead, but yet there are glimmers of hope and love and living. And I, that's kind of what took me through. I'm telling you, it's like this book is like operated, like it's all so it's all it's all the soft stuff is like, got me like you say, oh, what does it say about war? I'm like, yeah, okay, but that's not why it worked for me. It was more about connection. It does right. That is true. The connection between right. Yes, that is right. And there's something and it also says something about the power of writing to just to be touching and to be moving. And it so rarely happens, I think. And it felt for me for this book, which doesn't have,

22:54it doesn't come to me with like the kinds of elements that would usually speak to me. It made it so pleasurable to come to. And it also interestingly fascinated me when people didn't feel the same way. Like that's one of the big things for me because we've talked about it with other people in our office. And a lot of people were left really cold. And I, it's just so interesting that like people who are all kind of readers and care about reading can come to the same subject and the same book and have such radically different tastes. So here's a challenge. You're put it on the spot. Can you convince us? Convince us about the warmth. Do you have a passage or anything that you wanted to read that illustrates just the emotion behind this book and the emotion that got to you? Well, there's a very, there's a long section. I heard Paul you read from the book at one point and and had a reading series at a bar upstairs. That's cool. Yes, I was at a citerary. And first it was an interesting format because it was an interviewer like an interlocutor asking him

23:57a million questions and thinking, thinking, thinking. And I thought it was like, okay, it was fine. And he's really good guy. And, and then he was like, you know, at the end, I think I want to read a little bit too. And he were head like four pages and people were just like completely knocked out. And it was all of the talk and the explanation and the goals and the Odyssey and what he feels about his own dog kind of drifted away because the section he read was so powerful and so moving. It's too long for me to read, but it's a it's a section in which it comes across another dog at kind of a way station where people were kind of there's two parents and a kid, I think, were kind of living at one point. And they were kind of protected. And now they've disappeared. And the other dog who's going blind and really is kind of in firm is looking for proof that they're gone basically and sends at bags at now basically to go sniff his way through this open field and see if he can kind of

25:04what he can learn. And it's just it's a beautiful crushing section. But I would say anyone who reads those five pages will be like, Oh, this book, I'm in. Can we spend some time with that section? Yeah, because I also I'm not a cryer. I'm a feeler, but I'm not a cryer. I didn't necessarily cry while reading, but I just I did get like I had to pause. I had to gather myself. That scene is so special because you have this dog that's just kind of like waiting. He's look, he's he's sure that the humans his humans have gone, but he can't leave until he has confirmation. So there's the sense of devotion and love there. There's this really haunting creepy ghost story element to it. It's just like your stuck here with the dead. And then for me, what really moved me is how Etna helps that dog because that's such an illustration of care for this dog. He doesn't know.

26:09He's just met this dog. And the fact he'd probably be happier just to pass right through and spend the night in the house and not have to worry about taking on someone else's chore, you know. And it's such a for me, the reason why I was so moving is because it's such a small gesture that has such a huge impact. And in that gesture carries so much love, care. It's about what we do when we survive and encounter other survivors. And that's the heart for me of what this book is is illustrating. I do believe that animals, especially ones who live with us, see us through certain things. I'm about to bring the level of this conversation down by about a hundred notches, but I'm wondering if either of you have ever seen a movie called a dog's purpose. No, I have not. It's got, I'm just going to tell you, you probably should skip it. It is based on a book that I have not read by Bruce Cameron, but it's about a dog that you see, you see his soul travel through

27:15several different lives. But you, you see him grow up with this little boy. I, I'm not a cryer with books, but spoiler alert. He comes back into the into the kids life when the kid is an adult. And it I, I can hardly talk about it without crying. And I thought of that even though Etna is, is this story is on a completely different level. We'll probably get letters from listeners who are like get Lizzie again. I put her in a Disney movie. But you said, hallmark channel. I mean, this is where I live. I'm I love all these things. But I, I just love that idea. I wasn't lost on me that our family dog died the week after our oldest kid moved into her first apartment. He's, he saw her through. He, he, he was done. His, that was his purpose. He,

28:16he raised these children with us. And they were not children anymore. And he, and he was ready. He was done. And that's, I, I saw that in Etna, even in, in these small encounters. He saw these animals through. Yeah. Wow. It's got, you had another scene that you're going to read. Yeah. I'll read, I'll read a passage and it just happened to notice it as I was looking back at the book today. It's, it's, it was in a favorite part, but it's a part that captures what I think units so amazing at, which is juxtaposing beauty and horror and devastation and beauty all at once. And I just thought this is a quick section. Of course, this is an angry thing. We walk the paths of the shanty sniffing for food. We heard people talking to each other or pleasuring themselves or each other or crying. In one shanty, we sent someone inside, but there was no breathing. We stopped. We both

29:17sat and stared at the open dark space. And Semoru, Semoru's another dog who, Etna, is traveling with at this point. And Semoru shook his head and said, no way. But I took a step forward and stepped in all the way. I smelled the old woman lying on the floor on her back with her hands cleth together. Her eyes and her mouth were open. I smelled her wrist and the cave of her throat and the city dust and the river and the skin particles of other humans embedded in her thousand wrinkles. I watched an ant climb over her teeth and another one. I leaned forward and focused on the legs and antennas as one of the ants stood to inspect me, almost grazing my whiskers. I admired ants. Ants were forever. I smelled all over until I found an open bag of potato chips and a corner that I carried out. We found a quiet place to eat. I ripped open the bag wider and ate one

30:19chip and Semoru ate one and we took turns that way. After Semoru chewed on the rope again and I took the other end and we played for a little while as we walked. I mean, what a moment of grace, right? I personally wouldn't have shared the potato chips. I mean, I know you would have found an eyebrow. I might. I might. I think it's beautiful. But the ant crawling over the corpse and yet finding something beautiful in that and the language, I mean, again, the smell stuff really gets to me. I smelled her wrist and the cave of her throat and the city dust and the river and the skin particles of other humans embedded in her thousand wrinkles. To me, that's just tremendous writing and it's like simple and profound both. I hope that gets people to read a book that is about a talking dog. Oh my god. It shouldn't be a tough sound. I started this by saying convinced

31:20as and I'm convinced. Beautiful. What about you, Les? Was there a scene or a section that really moved you? My favorite moment was when at night, find himself on this military base at the end of the war and he listens to the soldiers talking about what will happen to him. And that's the end of the war, but the start of the book. Yes. So that was a little bit perplexing to me because I thought, well, this is a book about a dog in war and I thought, gee, I know it was a short book. It was almost over. I really think these pages were from 25 to 30 and I thought I'm listening to this on a fast speed or whatever. But it was so brave the way that he realizes his purpose there is over and he leaves the base in the middle of the night. Nobody really looks twice at him and he strikes out on his own. I found myself wanting more of the war weirdly. I wanted more build up to when he left

32:25to be on his own. I mean, and that's not the book that Paul Yoon wrote and that's fine. It's still a wonderful one. Why did you want more of the war? I don't know. I just felt like the war was over so quickly and I was gearing. I was settling in for more war. I don't know what that says about. This is like, I want the soft dogs. I want to feel things and I want war. I actually love that we don't get the war. I love that aspect and something I read over the summer about the Odyssey and it was Emily Wilson translated of the Odyssey famously reviewed it for the London review of the movie. The movie. The movie. The movie. She asks is Christopher Nolan's film an anti-war movie and in that in her critique, she pointed out I think it was Emily Wilson who pointed this out. The the Francois true font like truism that there is no such thing as an anti-war movie because in showing even the horrors of war, you do have to glorify some of the action that people

33:28have to do to survive. That's a very reductive way of that I'm saying it, but that is the thing that she gestured at. I loved about this book is that to give us an anti-war book, he just skipped the war. We only see the aftermath. We only see the devastation. We only see how people struggle to survive and we don't see even as in war and evidently the death toll rises. We don't see the heroism that happens. So I love that this book is I do too now. I just love the book skipped over it. Yeah. You don't need it. That's not what this is about. You don't need it. You just need to see what it means to survive afterward. What it means to have to toil to get home and not even be sure that your home is there. That's I liked it. I like that too now that you put it that way. I didn't I didn't think of it that way, but yes, I agree with that. I still think it sagged a little bit. I think even our review might have said that. Yeah. That it sags a little bit in the middle, not in a irreconcilable way. I still loved it. And what were your favorite moments? So we mentioned a few of the set pieces

34:33that I really, really loved. So I just wanted to take a moment to shout out some of the the small little details, the small images that Paul Yoon gives us in this book. Scott, I think you mentioned these scenes when we were talking just around the desk that he Paul Yoon gives us these like little micro images. The image of Etna. I think it's a flashback when he's in training camp and his soldier would have gum in his hand and the gum would fall from his hand on onto the floor. And Etna would come over gently lift it up and place it back in his hand while he's sleeping. Yeah. Sleeping or the scene. This is the scene. If I could I love the book cover here, but if I could somehow reframe the book cover and put another image on it, it would be this one. It is the image of the skull that Etna stumbles on in one of his adventures. And then a butterfly comes out of the skull and floats a little bit and descends back into it. That tablo and it's only like what a

35:34paragraph or something, but it is so beautiful. Those are the moments that I really, really loved in this book. And he shows such restraint with that moment. When I first heard about the butterfly, I had thoughts of sleeping beauty being in the house with the seven dwarves. It just felt like, it felt maybe it could have been a bit too much. But he has such restraint. He just, he gave it to you and then he let you digest it. And that was it. That restraint is the power of this book. Again, it's war story told from a dog's perspective that we are likening to the Odyssey. Maximilist ideas here. But instead he gives us this quiet. There's a sense of an exhale happening. And I think that's so powerful. And for me, that's what won me over about this book. All right, it's time to talk about the ending. Readers, here is your spoiler alert. If you don't want to know what happens, it now is your time to leave. But here in the studio, we are going to dive in.

36:46I'm going to take over. I'm just going to do a setup of what happens in the end. I'm just going to walk us through. All right. So the end of the book, a lot of stuff happens. First, Edna starts to get old. Edna starts to get old. And there's a point where Edna is walking and Edna loses the tooth. And he thinks, that was the first time that happened. And I was like, Oh, God, oh no. Oh, no. I don't want to see this. But I want Edna to live a long, happy life. And Edna does have the privilege of getting all about. No, the end becomes clear. So that's one thing. Next, he's journeying. He's journeying. And he's reunited with woman who recruited him, Susan, who has this ability to talk with dogs and is Edna's emotional anchor. And there has a few people, a few dogs in his life that he loves. Susan, Fuji, his first friend in the war, Semoru, this companion, but like he is reunited with

37:46Susan. They are traveling. They're trying to get to the safe haven. I think she's trying to deliver is it medicine? And they're attacked by bandits in the attack. She throws Semoru and Edna over this lake into this river. They go over waterfall. They're separated. It's like an incredible action sequence. You could imagine it. And completely, and Edna is saved. Semoru is lost, presumably drowned. But people say that they take him, put him in a well barrel, take him to a farm that Edna first is like, I can sense that I'm close to home. And it's a little bit unclear. But it seems like Edna has made it back to the land where his farm used to be, but his farm is no longer there. Edna then sees these birds and asks that they have any news about what's going on. And he asks that they have seen his companions, notably Fuji, who was his original companion at the start of the book. The birds say, we are going to go find out, hang tight. They leave and Edna goes and

38:53waits by a tree waiting to figure out what's going on and what happens next. And that's the last thing we get Edna waiting. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. I'm going to give the ultimate spoiler. He lives. He lives. You don't have to see him die. I don't know that I could have taken that. Yeah. That was. He sacrificed so much of his life for humanity that I wanted him. I just wanted him to be alive at the end. It was a low bar. It's the right choice. Yeah. And Edna is sort of an ambivalent bar a little bit. Definitely. Which is the right idea too. But it also for me fit the overall tone of the book again of that sense of suspension. You're left on that exhale in a book that's about the exhale after war or whatever that means. I'm curious though. Overall the adventures where the book goes, the action sequence, what did you make of it? Or did you like the ending? I thought it was exciting. I thought the exciting parts are exciting and I loved it. I love the ad about it. And it was sort of a little bit of a surprise because the path and the journey up to that point

39:57is pretty kind of not slow paced and deliberate. And you know, you're four-legged people. They can move that fast, right? You know, four, well, not people. But you know what I mean? Four-legged creatures. This book is so effective that you're like the dogs of other people too. I know. I know. I'm talking about dogs as people. It's true. I'm. You're better than people. But what makes it surprising and effective versus jarring and disjointed? What about it? Well, it's still about the same things as it always is. It's still about loyalty and faith and hope and and and coincidence and it's a sort of accident of surviving or not surviving. I mean, it, you know, leaning on believing in somebody to help you and them coming through, which happens at other points in the book and then other people don't get that luxury and that kind of grace. So it didn't feel out of out of step emotionally with what came before it. I agree with you. And also the idea

40:59that he spends all this time looking for home and ultimately a different version of home appears and that's Sujin who knew him as a puppy. Right. New he didn't like to have his paws touched. All right. Seize the progress of his life and and has a deep connection with him and understands him and he feels seen. And in some ways, that's even more valuable than having familiar ground under his, I'm going to have to say pause, not feet. And it's, you know, Paul, you and his playing with concepts that could sound heavy handed, but the idea of home, the idea of connection, the idea of communicating with creatures who are not the same as you. I didn't really love the part with the that that might have been an audiobook problem because the place of this wonderful narrator when he did the bird was a little cloying to me. That's not Paul Ewan's fault and no shade on

42:04the narrator. I really would pick up another book that he did, but I keep going back to Disney, but the bird part reminded me of Cinderella when the little birds come around and she's getting ready for the ball and they lift up her train. And it's not at all like that, but I think there's something about a talking bird that just doesn't thrill me. And then how the bird appears in the there, like the bird unlike the other animals that atna meets the bird comes in in this purely utilitarian way. The bird comes in. What have you seen from the skies? Do you have news? Here's a message. Can you pass it like the bird? It felt less serendipitous. Yeah. The bird feels as more of a tool versus a character or a moment even. You mentioned some of the themes that this book is tackling and the other one that I wanted to bring in is this idea of displacement too of feeling like a refugee after war, displaced after war. And I have a quote that I wanted to read.

43:08And it's related to it comes from when Sujan and atna are reunited. And Sujan says, you came all this way to go home? Yes, I said, I want to go home. Sujan was quiet again staring at me. My darling, she said, there's no home to go back to. I looked away. I wanted to say that I knew that all this time I knew that from the night I decided to leave until now, I had of course always known, but I heard her words and heard them again in my head and nothing changed in me. I just want to go back. I said, why? She said, I pushed my head against her hard and shut my eyes. To be there, I growled, to see and to smell the place where I was born and used to live, to fall asleep and wake up where I was born and used to live. To remember there was a place before all this where I used to live. To remember there was a place where there were days that passed into other days peacefully, peacefully without terror and where other animals I knew and cared about

44:10used to live. Atna, she said, petting me, calming me, you survived. I made you promise to survive and you did and you found me. Take me home, I said and opened my eyes. That's so beautiful. I have chills just reading. It's beautiful. What you said about he's found something other than home. He's found like a heart, a human, a soul that he can find home in is so powerful. But I think this book makes the case for like having solid ground underneath you, having that place where and he says it so many times where I used to live, having that memory, having that anchor is so important and what happens when you lose that? It's like a central question of every life, a dog or a human. That to me relates back to the epigraph. There are two epigraphs actually at the front of the book. But can I read this very short one from Louise Glick? I think it's pronounced Glick. In the end you do what the voice tells you. It says forget, you forget. It says

45:17begin again, you begin again. And that's what he's doing at the end of the book. He's beginning again. And that's what I think everyone does after more or terrible conflict or loss. You begin again. I say I don't get emotional. I don't cry. I do feel like kind of choked up in this conversation. Before we end this episode, we have a bunch of book recommendations I'm going to get to. But before that, I want to know what's your top line judgment about Edna? What's one thing that you want readers to absolutely know? Take away from this conversation about the book. That even if you think it's sounds weird, you should read it. I completely agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. I feel the exactly the same way. And if you don't like it, I want you to persuade me while you don't. If you don't like it, you have a hard heart. And you have to answer to Liz. Exactly. Yeah. You have to answer to Liz again. Right. The thing I want people to know to take away is we're talking about so much heart

46:20in this book. It's made possible because of very savvy, very clever storytelling decisions, like this decision to skip the war, like the decision not to linger on that image of the butterfly. Like it's so smart how he says this is just enough. That is confidence, that skill, that's talent, that's a high-dress perspective. Like there's a craft here too that I want people to appreciate as they're feeling it. Absolutely. A plus cover. We that should not go without saying. I mean, of course, we don't judge it by its cover. But I think this is a genius cover. It's not what you would expect. It's pink and green with a little sketch of a dog walking away. Walking away into a vast green blank field. Yeah. Walking into blankness, which could be the desolation of the war or just the idea of the unknown. It's great. It's beautiful. All right. How do you feel about the Edna thing, the volcanoes, the dogs being named after volcanoes? I was neutral on that. How about you? Yeah,

47:22it's weird. I still can't, I can't figure it out. I mean, I know there's an explanation about about fire and fury and stuff like that. It's an interesting choice. It's like when you get a dog from pet finder, you know how the, the littlers of puppies tend to, right? It's all the names of birds or it's the names of, you know, right, right cartoon characters. I just thought they, I mean, who knows? I they went with volcanoes. I mean, I think it's also meant to unsettle. There's a scene where Edna is confronted with this and this is on page 46. Edna, he said, trying to pronounce it, I said it was the name of a volcano. What's a volcano? He said. His ears moved as I explained it as best as I knew. I said it was like a door holding in what was inside the earth. And sometimes that door broke open and the earth erupted and there was fire. You mean war, the old dog said, you're named after war. I stayed quiet. I licked my paw. No one had ever said that about my name before. So that's a whole other wing of the conversation. But I feel like the naming of the volcanoes

48:26is important. That is part of the symbol that's part of the provocation of the book. But I agree. That'll be for another conversation. We're running out of time now. Before we go, though, I'm curious about recommendations. What would you recommend readers pick up after they've read Edna? And that could be for whatever reason. Maybe it's another book told from a dog's perspective. Maybe it's another war story. Who knows? Just give me some recommendations. And let's do it this way. Let's each go around and give one main one. And then we'll talk about them. And then after that, if we have other titles we want to mention, we can. I'm going to throw it over to you first, Liz. I will start. I would recommend The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunes, which features a sociable parent, a macaque named Eureka. And I read the book three years ago. And I remember the narrator who is a writer who is bird sitting during the pandemic. And I, it says, it speaks volumes to me that the character I remember the most is not the main human. It's the bird.

49:30Wow. I'm surprised by this. Not because that book is an excellent. It is. But because I feel like the Sigrid book that comes up often with an animal character is the friend, with also a dog. What is it about The Vulnerables that really speaks to you? I don't know. And I know that it's not a lot of people's favorites. Sigrid Nunes book, but it's my for whatever reason. The scene from that book that stands out to me, talk about quiet little detail that symbolizes care is at one point she has this like college guy roommate and thrown together because of the pandemic. And he leaves her vegan ice cream. I remember that. Yes. I really remember that because it was about a little bit of light in a very dark time. That book. Oh, great recommendation. Thank you. What about you Scott? I'll recommend, I don't know if I would say read it after, but the book that was sort of the I guess for me the gateway drug to this book was the eyes in the impossible, which is a kids book. I don't know. It's so

50:31good. Newberry winner. Was it? Yeah. It won the newberry for sure. Yeah. I mean, I would it's a book for it's kids book. I don't usually read kids books. It's again was a book about animals. I don't usually read books about animals. And it had some of the same feeling as this book does. There's a way in which the humanity of the animals and the way they connect to each other is extremely beautiful. And and again, tears clear of the mockishness and the kind of the schmaltz. Yeah. So to me that that's like a sure thing. An endorsement from Scott and an endorsement from Liz. It's so good. It takes place in Golden Gate Park. Is that right? Is that right? Or a park for sure? A park and the bison are the like the boss the protectors. That's right. I remember that. I loved it. Yes. What about you, MJ? My recommendations in a different direction. I'm like putting my hand or my face because we're about to get a little dark a little grim. My recommendation is angel down by Daniel Kraus. One of the New York Times' best books of the year last year.

51:31Pulitzer winner too. Pulitzer winner. It's also about the horrors of war but from a completely different perspective. There is another like kind of perspective magical realists can see. This is about angel found in a battlefield and these like kind of cast off soldiers need to deliver the angel back to base. But it's episodic and through each episode we see what people hope for how they're trying to survive. But they're yearning for in the chaos of war. And it makes this incredible anti war statement in this intense like set piece at the end. That book is also a feat that's told in one long sprawling sentence that feels so urgent and unforgettable. For me, I was thinking what are other war books that really hadn't impact after Atina and for me, Angel Down is that. Definitely. Definitely. Angel Down is not a Liz Book at all. It's really not.

52:32I'm so sorry to say but I feel comfortable saying that because the book has done so well and Angel Down is having the last laugh. It's not really my cup of tea. The other book I was thinking about recommending was Marley and me. We run the gamut here at the Book of Oral Tutudes. Right. Let me just redeem myself a little bit. Although really that is a great book and a great movie starring one of my favorite actors, Jennifer Aniston. Just to show that I have breath and scope, I will also recommend a book that my mom forced on me as a kid. My mom was very controlling about what we read as kids. And it was flush by Virginia Wolf. And it's her book about her dog. I love Virginia Wolf. I did not know. Like Virginia Wolf is like one of those writers that made me. I've made two hundred. Yes. But I don't know flush. It's a kids book or maybe it's it was given

53:33to me as a kid. And I loved it. What is it? It's about her dog. It's just like through. It's been so long, but I believe it's told through her dog's eyes. And I definitely read it when I was too young. I was in sixth grade. I was too young to appreciate the beauty of the language, which I'm sure given Virginia Wolf's hands it had. But yeah, it was from the dog's perspective. And I remember thinking, okay, it's it's not Judy Bloom or Paula Danziker, but I'll take it. Flash, go check it out. Yes. Do you have any other racks? Scott? I mean, on the dog front, there've been two poetry collections about dogs. Let's hear them. One of them was called Dog Girl by Reginald Wayne Beth. That's a great title. Yeah, it's a good title. And the other is Billy Collins. And I'm again, I'm not like a super dog person inherently. And I can't remember the Billy Collins. What the book is called, it's another dog pun. I'm pretty sure it may be dog days or

54:35who knows. But certainly dog girl is terrific. I would recommend that as my second pick. Gone with this poetry theme, I have Deaf Republic by Ilya Kamensky, which is number one, just an excellent collection. But it's a collection that I recommend. It's not even a collection. It's a long poem. It's a story. And I recommend it to people who don't typically read poetry, because there's a very legible narrative that you can follow. It's about this occupied town, in this war, and you follow during this occupation, a deaf child is killed. I think soldiers say you need to go back to your houses, but he doesn't hear. He's killed. And in protest, the entire town goes silent. And they in there's like sign language incorporating in the book. It's very, very good. But it's about war. And the other ones I have, of course, the Odyssey just want to mention that. You've mentioned it several times. But I'm saying go read the Odyssey. An immense world by Ed Young is nonfiction. And it's about specifically animal perception. And so if you liked seeing the

55:36world through Edna's eyes, and nose, and nose, and ears, and ears, right? Go read an immense world. And then the other one that came to mind was Station 11 by Emily St. John Mendo. Not necessarily but it's about how we trudge forward after calamity. And in that case, that's a giant pandemic that wipes out like what, like 99% of the earth. And that also has this feeling of suspension and there's a haunting quality to it. And it's beautiful. Is it too obvious to talk about the road as well? Correct. Well, of course, these are the roads. I've never read it. I'm ashamed to say. It is good. Don't tell anyone. It's good. I've heard. Never too late. No, Edna. But it's good. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, Kormac. Yeah. Before we, before we take down any other famous famous authors, I think we should wrap up, but Liz Scott, thank you so much for joining us. This is really, really fun. MJ, thank you. This was so much fun. And you're the best host. Thank you. Absolutely. This was terrific. And by the way, I realized the Billy Collins book is called Dog Show.

56:39There you go. We got that title in there. Thank you for that. And for joining us. And then also thank you to everyone for reading with us. Please keep up the conversation. Again, we have an article up online headline book club read at Nabai Paul Yoon with the book review. And now, as promised, is the reveal of our October book in October. We're reading Switzerland by Emma Klein. This is also a very moving, very sad novel about a man with dementia and he is joining to Switzerland to end his life on his own terms. We follow as he makes that journey, but also as he looks back on his life, his career, and as he tries to settle some of the relationships that have really haunted him. We'll be talking about the book online throughout the month. Right now, we have up an article headline book club read Switzerland by Emma Klein with the book review, leave your thoughts in the comment section there. And we will also be discussing the book on the podcast that airs on October 30. We hope you'll join us. And until next time, happy reading. Hi, I'm David Booth. For more than 50 years, I've worked in financial markets. I co-founded

57:45dimensional fund advisors in my apartment and helped grow it into a global investment firm, managing a trillion dollars in assets. Along the way, I learned one simple truth. Investing isn't about predicting the future. It's about managing uncertainty. In my new book, Stay Calm, I explain how trusting markets, not gurus, gives investors a powerful advantage. Discover how science-based investing can help you live better and feel better along the way at staycominvesting.com. That's staycominvesting.com.