The Boss Dog

First published as a limited edition by the Yolla Bolly Press, this brief and charming novel by essayist/epicure Fisher tells with childlike esprit of an American family's residence in Aix-en-Provence. The mother and her saucily precocious children, Anne and Mary, get to know the town with the staunch help of Boss--``the doggiest dog anyone ever saw''--a stray with an incurable craving for pistachio nougat. The Boss Dog has an enviable knowledge of Aix's low and high life, and guides the three travelers through crowds and toward restaurants. He is ``a large fellow with a fat rear, mostly the kind of terrier called yippy, part Fox and part Boston and part Mystery, a rather rat-nosed, narrow-eyed, undistinguished dog esthetically.'' Fisher's inimitable observations of place, taste and character give readers vicarious encounters with the fountains, cafes, festivals and food of Aix, while she lyrically--and nervily--captures the lives of Americans abroad. The droll accident of being outsiders, and its fatigues, have rarely been so delicately evident in fiction. (Apr.)