Expectation about a book, for me, can make or break a read. It’s not about judging a book by its cover, or that I’m close-minded before I begin reading, but there are things that lead a potential reader to make some initial judgements. First off is the title. In my opinion what the author has chosen to call his book should be reflective of its content. ‘Dog Walks Man’ is a clever way of suggesting straight off that the dog somehow takes priority in the story. However, in this story it is not the case. Although Pete, the canine companion, does feature, the book is told from John Zeaman’s own perspective, as the walker of the dog. ‘Odyssey’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “a long and eventful journey”. Zeaman and Pete’s walks may be long, but not what I would call eventful. Primarily, the story is that of a contemplative middle-aged man and his view on a series of dog walks; the details of which are described at length.

The writer does contemplate a couple of times throughout the book whether he is ‘making too much of [dog-walking]?’ Whilst the tales are momentarily humorous, the bulk is made up of descriptions of what the dog-walker sees and how he feels about it (notably, the industrialisation of wasteland), in addition to the sense of escapism he experiences when out and about. I would consider myself a ‘dog-person’, and have experienced plenty of dog walks, but I’m not sure this is necessarily relevant to the read, because there is just more about the walk than there is of the dog.

Dog Walks Man is an American book, and surprisingly I found that the considerable amount of American references to culture and to the various indigenous plants, whilst it sounds a tad paltry, kept me on the outside looking in, as I couldn’t relate to, or understand a lot of them. Zeaman is an art critic in addition to being an author, and the references to the art-world throughout the book, only served to further alienate me from the story.

I found this book disappointing. Disappointing because of the lack of interesting things that I expected to read about, but mainly because Zeaman writes so well. The writing style is very readable and he has the ability to write with humour, yet it is the content which lets this book down. I found myself reading a couple of chapters, and thinking “if this doesn’t get better, I’m putting it down”, consequently found that it did get better, but then reverted back to descriptions of suburban shrubs once again.

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