“And so the wise ancestor made the decision, in those primitive times long before the invention of kennel clubs and poodle parlors, to become a domestic accessory in a human household. On the origin of the man’s-best-friend legend: In the opening chapter, he warns: “readers of a sensitive disposition may be offended by the odd remarks about babies, cats, hygiene, poodles, and vets who insist on taking one’s temperature the old-fashioned way.”īoy proceeds to debunk widely accepted lore about canines. Photo by Patrick Guadin.Ī Dog’s Life is a bit more biting than Mayle’s other work Boy is as blunt as he is waggish. Boy gained further international fame through magazine photo shoots, as well as local notoriety for his antics. Boy made his literary debut in Toujours Provence, Mayle’s 1991 follow-up to the best-selling A Year in Provence, both light-hearted observational chronicles of life in Provençal France.

Few noted A Dog’s Life (1995), which is one of the all-time great dog books.Ī Dog’s Life, for the unfamiliar, is ostensibly the memoir of Boy, an abandoned mongrel adopted by Mayle and his wife (whom Boy astutely refers to as “the management”) not long after the couple relocated to Provence in the late 1980s. Enhanced by fifty-nine splendidly whimsical drawings by Edward Koren, A Dog's Life gives us all the delights we expect from any book by Peter Mayle-pedigree prose, biting wit, and a keen nose for the fragrances of civilization-together with the insouciant wisdom of which only a dog (and probably only Peter Mayle's dog) is capable.When British author Peter Mayle died on Thursday at age 78, every obituary mentioned A Year in Provence (1989), most referenced A Good Year (2004), and many even exhumed his sex education books from the 1970s ( Where Did I Come From? The Facts of Life Without Any Nonsense and With Illustrations). We share in his amorous dalliances, his run-ins with French plumbers and cats, and in the tidbits (both conversational and edible) of his owners' dinner parties. As Boy recounts his progress from an overcrowded maternal bosom to unchallenged mastery of the Mayle household, he tells us why dogs are drawn to humans ('our most convenient support system') and chickens ('that happy combination of sport and nourishment'). Now he gives this canny canine a voice in an irresistible 'memoir' that proves that the best vantage point for observing life may well be on all fours. Once upon a time in Provence, Peter Mayle adopted a dog of uncertain origins and dubious hunting skills and gave him a name-Boy.

A dog's life book peter mayle