{"id":7761,"date":"2018-02-08T12:34:35","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T12:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7761"},"modified":"2018-02-15T12:01:48","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T12:01:48","slug":"on-smaller-dogs-and-larger-life-questions-by-kate-figes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7761","title":{"rendered":"On Smaller Dogs and Larger Life Questions by Kate Figes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Virago 28 February 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

192pp, hardback, \u00a314.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Journalist Kate Figes, author of many thoughtful books about family life and relationships, writes here about her sudden diagnosis of metastasized breast cancer just as she was approaching her sixtieth birthday.<\/p>\n

The book opens with a description of her unexpectedly emotional reaction to the arrival in her home of a dependent new puppy, Zeus.\u00a0 It is only after the diagnosis that she understands how vulnerable she must have been feeling.\u00a0 With grown-up daughters and an established position as a writer, Figes should have been looking forward to a new stage in her life.\u00a0 Instead, she has to work out a whole new way of surviving.<\/p>\n

With what she describes as \u2018a chaotic, insecure childhood\u2019 in the background of all her thoughts, it must have been incredibly hard to remain steady.\u00a0 As if her own fear of death, and regrets about a life to be cut short\u00a0 –\u00a0 let alone the tender feelings of her husband and daughters\u00a0 –\u00a0 were not enough to deal with, some of her friends are so anxious and nervous that they are unable to find the right words to say, \u2018as if I were dead already\u2019.\u00a0 Others were, and continue to be, fantastically supportive.\u00a0 Even the innocent enthusiasm of the playful dog becomes a mainstay.<\/p>\n

This is a quiet book – unsurprisingly, given what she has been through.\u00a0 In it, Figes explores self-pity, anger, fear, loss, but also the pleasures of both work and purpose-free activity.\u00a0 A beach-hut, purchased with money inherited from her German-Jewish grandmother, provides much-needed retreat-space.\u00a0 We see her navigating her way through all possible appropriate treatment options, including detoxing, and becoming her own expert in the process.\u00a0 We see her drawing on her own experiences as a child, in mediation work with warring couples.\u00a0 As time goes by, however, she begins to worry less about the people she loves: \u2018They will have to take care of themselves.\u2019 \u00a0Effectively, she has been \u2018forced to accept the emotional truth of being mortal\u2019.<\/p>\n

Remission gives Figes what she calls \u2018a second chance at brilliant, beautiful life\u2019.\u00a0 What a wonderful thing to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

This is a quiet book – unsurprisingly, given what she has been through. In it, Figes explores self-pity, anger, fear, loss, but also the pleasures of both work and purpose-free activity. A beach-hut, purchased with money inherited from her German-Jewish grandmother, provides much-needed retreat-space. We see her navigating her way through all possible appropriate treatment options, including detoxing, and becoming her own expert in the process… As time goes by, however, she begins to worry less about the people she loves […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7763,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7761\/revisions\/7763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}