Behind the Bathtub

by Colette Audrey

** if you care to know, there are SPOILERS in this post **

The story of a dog living in a French apartment. You might think this is one of those fairly common books all about the author's dog and what it meant to the family and its endearing or destructive habits, but instead it's a bit more untidy. Or at least, had a different angle than I expected. Because the author seems rather focused on her dog's sexual behavior, and its death (the dog crawled into a small space in the bathroom to die, thus the title).  I don't really understand why the owner didn't have her dog spayed, but I think I recall that she wanted puppies. Or to just see the dog have puppies. Or to give her dog the joy of motherhood, something like that. But there are far too many details about trying to find a suitable mate for her dog, and how the activities surrounding that went (unsuccessful) and how messy and inconvenient it was when the dog was in heat. Plus some almost-funny but mostly just awkward scenes where she took her dog out in public and it persistently made advances on men in the restaurant, who had no idea what the dog was actually doing. Mostly I felt sorry for the uncomfortable situations and wondered why this lady didn't just get her dog fixed already. Although looking at when it was published (the sixties) perhaps it wasn't so common for most people to get their pets neutered and spayed?

So it was an okay book, certainly different in terms of dog stories but not very memorable. And take all this with salt; there was probably much more normal stuff about the dog in there that I just don't remember, it didn't stand out.

This was a book I picked up at a used sale once on a whim, but it isn't in my collection anymore.

Rating: 2/5 ........ 307 pages, 1963