The Labrador Pact [electronic resource] :

Titre:

Auteur:

Description:

The story of a family in crisis and the loyal dog that holds them together, from the witty, imaginative author of The Dead Fathers Club.The Labrador Pact is a cunning and original take on domestic life, with an improbably poignant narrator.

Éditeur:

HighBridge Audio,

Date:

2008

Format numérique:

CLOUDLIBRARY MP3

Langue:

Anglais

Résumé

The story of a family in crisis and the loyal dog that holds them together, from the witty, imaginative author of The Dead Fathers Club. The Hunters-Adam, Kate, and their children Hal and Charlotte-are a typical family, with typical concerns: work, money, love, and the trials of adolescence. What sets them apart is Prince, their black labrador.Prince is an earnest and determined young dog. He strives to live up to the tenets of the Labrador Pact: Duty Over All. Other dogs, led by the springer spaniels, have revolted, but Prince takes his responsibilities seriously. As things in the Hunter family begin to go awry-marital breakdown, rowdy teenage parties, attempted suicide-he uses every canine resource to keep the clan together.In the end, Prince must choose: the family or the Pact? His decision may cost him everything.Wry, perceptive, and heartbreaking, The Labrador Pact is a cunning and original take on domestic life, with an improbably poignant narrator.

Critiques (3)

Critique du Publishers Weekly

In the second novel by British author Haig (The Dead Fathers Club), morality is left to the dogs. Prince, the Labrador narrator, lives by the creed, "Duty over all." At the beginning of the novel, it seems that Prince has failed all of humanity and disgraced Labs for all time, and, as he is about to be put down, he tells his own tragic story. Although he clings to the teachings of his mentor, Henry, a former police dog, Prince can't keep his married master Adam's eye from roving toward Emily, the new gal in town who just happens to be married to old schoolmate Simon. Further puzzling Prince are the aromas of fear and desire that Adam's wife, Katie, exudes whenever Simon comes around. And he certainly can't seem to sniff out a fix for the teenage woes encountered by Adam and Katie's two kids. With dogged determination, he sacrifices his own pleasure to protect and serve the family that can neither understand his entreaties nor appreciate his level of commitment. Although a little heavy-handed and arguably gimmicky, readers can't help feeling bad for Prince, a good dog just trying to do the right thing. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Critique de Kirkus

A faithful family friend gives his all for "his" human family in this modern beast fable, another revisionist romp from the British author of The Dead Fathers Club (2007). This one, originally published in the UK in 2004 as The Last Family in England, is narrated by Prince, a handsome Labrador dog, who "speaks" with other nonhuman creatures and communicates with humans by means of therapeutic tail-wagging and crotch-sniffing, and well-timed warning barks. We first meet Prince in the veterinarian's office. Schoolteacher Adam Hunter has taken the beloved pooch to be put down--for reasons then explained in a book-length flashback. Prince admits he has violated the eponymous Pact adhered to by all Labradors, "the only dogs left who were willing to devote our lives to the protection of our masters." As Prince explains (during walks in the park) to his "mentor" Henry, a sagacious retired police dog, the Hunters are a pawful. The aforementioned Adam is, in full midlife-crisis mode, under the spell of bewitching young aromatherapist Emily. Adam's spouse Kate is puzzlingly unsettled by their re-acquaintance with Emily's shark-like husband Simon, Adam's former pal, who also, it appears, has a history with Kate. And the Hunters' teenagers, Hal and Charlotte, are...well, teenagers. Inflamed emotions and miscellaneous misbehavior intensify, and corpses of multiple species begin piling up, as Prince struggles to avert the worst, inspired by the Pact's dictum: "If one human Family is secure and happy, it means there is security and happiness beyond." The novel works because its central conceit, and Prince, are real charmers. But the narrative is skimpy and redundant, perilously cute and clogged with anticipations of Haig's Shakespeare-inflected The Dead Fathers Club (besides Prince, there are fellow mutts Falstaff and Lear). By no means a failure, but Aesop and Orwell did it better. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Critique du New York Review of Books

In "Henry IV, Part 1," Falstaff much prefers survival (and a good breakfast) to honor and duty: "What is that word honor? ... Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No." The demands of virtue are also a problem for Prince, the canine narrator of Haig's curiously affecting take on "Henry," which tells the story of a loyal Labrador's efforts to hold his human family together. If only he follows the pact of his breed, Prince tells himself, he can save these people from themselves from "all their lies and tensions and betrayals and injustices." His friend Falstaff, a chubby mixedbreed he meets in the park, begs to differ. "Duty schmooty," he bays (or however fictional dogs utter their dialogue) when faced with Prince's insistence on "duty over all." Dark, comic and quite brilliantly adult, Haig's thinking animals never stray into the sickly sweet zone. As the duplicities mount (among both species), Prince's Labrador dogma proves inadequate to the task: "Whereas dogs can learn to suppress their instincts," he realizes, "for humans there is no hope."