Author: Michelle Wright
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Reviewer: Nicola Robinson
A note for dog lovers: I read this book with my own good boy Harry at my side, secure in the belief that, as Wright dedicates the story to her dog Harvey, she wouldn’t traumatise my dog-loving mind with more than it could bear. My trust was well-placed. You may safely read Good Boy.
As I write its only March, but I am willing to bet that Good Boy will be one of my top reads for this year. I doubt that any other book will break my heart so very exquisitely – and that is not a spoiler re the ending, for there is heartache and redemption seeded through every page.
Good Boy is the story of 37-year-old Cookie, serving the final months of a 20-year gaol sentence for murder in a minimum security unit, who joins a program to rehabilitate troublesome and traumatised dogs from a local shelter. If the dogs can be reformed, they will be offered for adoption by families. If not, they will be put down.
Cookie is assigned to Nigel, an anxious and unruly bitzer, found abandoned at the side of the road. Nigel is a hot mess. The first training session goes like this:
‘The afternoon started off completely shit for Nigel and went downhill from there. When the dog wasn’t trying to rip his own tail off, he was chewing chunks from the pine sleepers that edged the garden beds or attempting to tunnel down through the already ratty lawn of the yard to escape the company of the other dogs and humans.’
Scolded by the trainer for praising Nigel when the dog has manifestly failed to deserve it, Cookie circumvents the rules by renaming him ‘Good Boy’. But despite his caring (and sometimes rule-bending) attempts to calm the dog, soon the six-week program is nearing its end, and it looks like curtains for Good Boy. Cookie, driven by his own sense of justice, takes matters into his own hands …
The story of Cookie and Good Boy – which covers a few short weeks and focuses mostly on a single 24-hour period – is interspersed with Cookie’s own life story. We meet a motherless, hyperactive child, sweet at core despite the neglect and verbal abuse of his criminal father and see him grow into the damaged young man who commits the crime that landed him in gaol.
Michelle Wright leads us ever deeper, layering the defining incidents of her protagonist’s life. We meet the people who try to help Cookie, characters drawn with empathy and occasional humour. And, inevitably, the people who fail him. As we move further towards the defining events of Cookie’s life, it becomes increasingly apparent that there is more than one candidate for the title of ‘Good Boy’.
Wright’s prose is quiet, precise, and cuts to the bone. Book groups will read Good Boy and water down their wine with tears. I cannot recommend this wholly original book highly enough.
Publisher blurb
Some bonds can’t be broken
It’s September 1997 and Cookie, an inmate in a minimum-security prison, is serving the last four months of his sentence when he signs up for a last-chance rehabilitation program for abandoned dogs.
He’s assigned Nigel—whom he renames Good Boy—an anxious soul with a talent for gnawing his way through walls. Cookie has his work cut out preparing him for the upcoming behavioural assessment that will decide his fate: pass, and Good Boy will be up for adoption and the chance of finding a loving home for the first time in his life; fail, and he will be put down. When Cookie realises that Good Boy is almost certain to flunk the test, he must decide how far he’ll go in his bid to save him.
As the friendship between them deepens, Cookie is forced to confront the past that shaped him, revealing truths he would rather have left behind.
Good Boy movingly explores the bonds between dogs and their humans, and how hope might move us beyond punishment and towards redemption.