This being the 3rd of 3 very different choices from the Woodbridge Browser's book group in 2017. About a, 'misfit man [finding] a misfit dog...a wholly different kind of love story'

Although it could also be like A Street Cat Called Bob?

(25/03/17) *slight spoiler*

This is the touching and sad story of Ray and ‘One eye’, both damaged and solitary individuals excluded from normal society, who become the thickest of friends.

Ray is 57, ‘too old for starting over, too young for giving up’, the subject of a repressed and traumatic childhood, which is pieced together during the book - both a literal and emotional/metaphorical journey.

Baume’s writing and Ray’s distinct voice is mesmerising, sometimes poetical; roofs with tiny ‘hedgehogs of moss’; and sometimes discordant and confused as it follows Ray’s inner dialogue and paranoia.

I particularly liked the descriptions of seascapes and beach-combing with one eye and Ray’s attempts at second (dog) person analyses of sights, smells and sounds.

The ending is not completely tidied-away, there is some catharsis and closure around his mother and father, but we don’t know the outcome of the incident on the beach, or whether the 2 amigos continue their lives unmolested in the ghost-ridden salmon house, or even back on the road touring the byroads of Ireland.

One particular piece of prose that I liked explores the imagined lives of the rag rug makers, '[rug strangers] have bigger families but fewer belongings, brighter clothes but dimmer prospects’.

ps. this is nothing like, A street cat called Bob, which is probably a good thing :)

Leaf with mum on mother's day, ahh, enjoy :)