Long Island Books: Reading A Woman's Mind
A former book editor's madcap first novel

"The Dog Walker"

Leslie Schnur
Atria Books, $25

A few pages into "The Dog Walker," a first novel by a former book editor, I felt as though the author, Leslie Schnur, had somehow gained access to my brain while I was sleeping. It's one thing to feel such a strong connection with a book that you're compelled to keep reading; it's another thing to feel that, with a few modifications, you could have written the book yourself.

Which brings up a tangled snarl of responses in this reader, from wanting to hang on the author's coattails by finally finishing my own novel-in-perpetual-progress to wondering whether she and I are but two members of a segment of the female population larger than I'd ever imagined that thinks a lot alike.

But a completed novel and a published one are two vastly different animals, and actually picturing a whole readership of women identifying with this book (a phenomenon, no doubt, that Ms. Schnur's publisher is counting on) is unsettling. One gets possessive about one's idiosyncracies and doesn't necessarily need to know that one is not unique in having them.

Okay, so maybe it's not so unusual to have done some spying in one's life, as Nina, the title character, does - though to an extreme perhaps possible only in fiction. As teenaged babysitters, didn't we love opening up strange medicine cabinets to see what was behind the mirror? Didn't we rummage through kitchen cabinets to find hidden stashes of goodies?

And, grown up, we look through our boyfriend's or husband's belongings while he's in the shower or at work. We observe, take note, file the information away as aspects of him we wouldn't learn any other way because he's a guy and he doesn't share everything about himself. We look for clues, for information that lives below the surface, because we're women and we need to know more than what he chooses to reveal.

But Nina - well, Nina takes things to a far more exalted and risky level of espionage. We meet her in flagrante delicto, luxuriating in the bathtub of a man whose dog she walks and whom she is certain she is in love with. She's never met him but by spending time in his apartment alone while picking up and dropping off his weimaraner, Sid (for Siddhartha), has gleaned sufficient clues to know he's Mr. Right. Of course she's wrong, but not for the reasons one might guess.

The story could have been in Nina's voice, but it's not, and the disembodied narrator has a sort of doppelganger effect, being so close to Nina's thoughts but not actually generating them. It's a nice change from the typical first-person head trips that make up much of contemporary fiction, and it allows us access to conversations and situations otherwise invisible.

On the other hand, it makes for more transparency where the writer is concerned. It's not the imaginary character speaking, it's the real-life author, albeit using a literary voice. And the reader may be less forgiving when it comes to stylistic idiosyncracies.

Ms. Schnur surely knows how to tell a story: "The Dog Walker" proceeds entertainingly from that near-breathtaking lead-in, with comedic turns and close calls and surprises along the way, not to mention a bizarre cast of human and canine characters, to a tidy ending - maybe even too tidy.

In a nutshell (as the narrator herself might say): Dog walking was not Nina's original career choice; she picked it up from her friend Claire, who leaves New York to pursue an acting career in Hollywood just as Nina is experiencing extreme burnout in her publishing job. It's hard work, but it pays her more than $2,000 a week, all in cash. She wears what she chooses, sets her own schedule, and has enough time to work on her quirky beaded sculptures.

Dogs were so much easier to deal with than people, anyway, and Nina relished her private time. Except when she was fantasizing about Daniel, the object of her covert infatuation.

But Daniel is not who she believes him to be, and the dog walking goes from a groovy temporary arrangement to a permanent sentence, and her mother won't stop bugging her, and everything in Nina's life seems to be undergoing a seismic shift (she even falls down a few times). Which is exactly what you'd expect from a madcap novel like this. And what makes you keep turning the pages is Nina's sardonic wit and the author's lively imagination and sense of timing.

Some parts don't work as well as others, and some popular culture references seem a little strained, but with characters like 8-year-old Bono, so named because of his mother's obsession with the band U2, dogs named Wallis and Simpson (a pair of dachshunds), Safire, and Che, and cornball situations, the story adds up to a fun, satisfying read.

That is, when I wasn't snagged by an aggravating quirk of Ms. Schnur's prose that has apparently taken hold in contemporary writing: the elision of "of" in certain prepositional phrases. I don't know about anyone else, but when I read phrases like "Joe called me a couple weeks ago" something dissonant goes off in my head. I'm not sure if it's done unintentionally, if it's part of a new pomo literary style, or what, but I wish writers would cut it out. It just looks sloppy.

Leslie Schnur, who was editor in chief of Delacorte Press, has a house in East Hampton.

Ilene Roizman, a former editor and writer at The Star, now lives in Amherst, Mass.