Lost Dogs - Lucie Pagé - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Lucie Pagé

GENRE: Literary Fiction

RATING: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A quirky book about a medley of individuals who are “lost dogs” in a sense. Impeccable in character development. Wanted more at the end. Recommended to literary fiction lovers.

Story Synopsis:

Contemporary Toronto.

Brent: English professor and aspiring writer with low self-awareness. His pit-bull Gary is missing. After sticking ‘Lost Dog’ posters all over the neighbourhood, Brent isn’t sure what to do.

Katherine: Brent’s girlfriend. Stage manager at the local theatre. Confident despite being the underdog of her family. Fed up of Brent’s self-serving nature and of always being strong for him.

Becca: A fourteen-year-old with a self-absorbed mother Caroline. Becca thinks she’s depressed but has no one to listen to her woes.

Karl: Works at a dead-end IT support job. Can’t control his addiction to porn and masturbation.

How these characters are interrelated, you will need to read and find out.

The story comes to us mostly in the third person perspective of the four main characters.

Bookish Yays:

💐 A character-driven book is nothing without well-created characters, and the four protagonists are distinct from each other, but still have one thing in common: they are all searching for the way ahead. While each of them is flawed in some way or another, their journeys towards self-awareness don’t progress at the same speed.

💐 Despite having four story tracks from the four characters, the plot never gets confusing, nor does the number of characters get overwhelming.

💐 The individual character perspectives are well-defined. For instance, the writing for Becca is exactly how a teen would speak, with Gen-Z acronyms and abbreviations sprinkled in between. You get to know the characters in and out because of this clear-cut writing.

💐 The personalities of even the secondary characters, whether major ones such as Becca’s mom or relatively minor ones such as Katherine’s parents, are detailed nicely.

💐 I love how the title works with the plot. The story begins with Gary the lost dog, but soon, you realise that he isn’t the only lost dog in the plot. What a creative connection!

💐 The book covers an emotional journey of self-discovery for the four protagonists and one secondary character as well. Some learn and grow, others don’t. All are obsessive about something, and that defines them. I loved how real it all felt, despite being so extreme.

💐 To relieve the intensity of the above, there are plenty of funny scenes and witty writing interspersed in the drama. Of course, the humour is dark in keeping with the core theme, and hence it works excellently to lower the tension.

💐 When a book usually has multiple character points of view, either the characters are related to each other as kith or kin, or there is some connection across them such as a common neighbourhood. In this case, the characters aren’t interrelated at all. Their arcs remain mostly distinct, and the only common point across them is that they are based in the same city. Despite this, I never felt like I was reading four distinct plots because the essence of the emotions was the same across. This was brilliantly done.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🌹 Unlike a typical literary fiction, the pacing in this novel is comparatively fast. But in between, the story starts dragging a bit. At this point, the characters are stuck in the loop of their despair-filled routine, so even we feel claustrophobic along with them. It picks up again after a turnaround in their individual situations.

🌹 I’ve never read a book where one of the main characters is a porn addict and an obsessive masturbator. I can’t say I enjoyed this experience as this content was a bit beyond my comfort zone. But I must appreciate how sex addiction was highlighted through Karl. And of course, the author handled his complicated character arc skilfully.

🌹 I am not too sure how I feel about the ending. I did like it as it established the intention of the author in the discrete build-up of the four protagonists. Some of the characters get a satisfying finish to their arcs, but a couple are left in limbo. I liked the finale enough, but I wanted some more closure as it was a bit open-ended.

Bookish Nays:

🌵 The book is set in Toronto but there is not much about the city except for 3-4 mentions of its name. I would have loved to see some of the city’s atmosphere incorporated in the writing. Without the locational vibes or scenic descriptions of the setting, a story feels incomplete.

🌵 I always love to know how old the main characters are, so that I can figure out the age-appropriateness of their behaviour and sketching. However, the ages of all characters except of Becca are never revealed to us.

All in all, this is an idiosyncratic story of four flawed “lost dogs.” For a debut work, it is very intricate and well-crafted. Rarely does so ambitious a plot hit the bull’s eye in an author’s first novel.

If you are a literary fiction lover or a fan of dark humour, I think you will enjoy this eccentric journey of self-discovery. But if you don’t enjoy character-driven stories, this isn’t for you. The book deserves an audience who can appreciate its style.

My thanks to author Lucie Pagé for providing me with a complimentary copy of “Lost Dogs”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.