I have occasionally fantasized about what my dog might say if she suddenly became able to talk. I imagine that she would reveal that she has a deeper understanding than we humans do of everything she has observed during her lifetime.

A variation on this scenario, involving a feline, was executed marvelously by the Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki  in I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru), and David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle does an outstanding job with the canine point of view.  In the latter vein, there is also The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein, which is narrated by a very perceptive dog named Enzo. If you love dogs or car racing or both and need a brief, light entertainment, read this book.

Stein skillfully ties Enzo’s astute observations to a compelling plot. However, his attempt to extract a Buddhist-like philosophy from the human protagonist’s extraordinary ability to race cars, especially in the rain, becomes a bit heavy-handed at times-- or perhaps it just feels as if it was contrived with too close attention to what might appeal to the most book buyers and sellers. Nevertheless, the story’s heart is in the right place, and if you are in bed with a cold or your spirits are a low, this is just what you need to get through. 

Julia Glass is amazing! Since the publication of the National Book Award-winning Three Junes in 2002, she has cranked out three more novels, most recently The Widower’s Tale. Although I was not as impressed as many were with Three Junes, its 2006 sequel, The Whole World Over, enchanted me with its descriptions of a character running a bakery and the achingly poignant sections written from the point of view of a woman who has suffered slight brain damage. Then in 2008 came the very impressive and quietly affecting I See You Everywhere, which explored the lives of those left behind by a suicide.

Now we have The Widower’s Tale.  As in her other books, Glass tells this story in chapters that alternate the point of view among several characters, but what is astonishing here is how convincingly true each voice rings despite the huge range among them in terms of age, class, and other key characteristics. At moments the pomposity of the voice of the eponymous widower almost verges on caricature—would anyone alive today, even a retired Harvard University librarian, begin sentences addressed to his female offspring with “Daughter”?—but we soon understand that this affectation is a necessary part of the armor that he has donned to cope with the hand he has been dealt by life.

But what makes Glass a master of her craft is her ability to make the possessors of these unique voices come together as actors in a plot that makes you rush to turn to every next page as soon as possible, while at the same time feeling regret in advance as the dwindling number of dots at the bottom of the e-book reader screen indicate that the story will be ending too soon. The hints about how the destinies of characters will collide are such that there is a moment when the reader might think, scornfully, that the plot twists are too obvious, but just as in “real” life, there are plenty of surprises in the details.