Galley Talk

Amanda Snook, marketing manager, Schuler Books, Lansing, Mich.

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 9/19/2005

I cried like a baby at the end of John Grogan's Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog[Morrow, Nov.]. We've been passing this galley around, and everyone loves it so much that we've started calling it Tuesdays with Marley. I have a feeling that it will appeal to people looking for a good, simple story with honest emotions. Some books today are so complicated that we forget the power of a good story well told, and that's what this book is all about. The book is actually created from a decade's worth of essays that Grogan wrote for a newspaper column. It begins with Grogan and his wife buying a loving but destructive puppy, Marley, who can't be trained and is literally tearing their home and lives apart. The book spans Marley's life from puppyhood to debilitating old age. It's a fairly simple and straightforward structure, but it holds together. It's not something I would have normally picked up, but Grogan's funny and moving story grabbed me. Good books evoke an emotion from you, and this one certainly does that.