“The Dogs of Littlefield is so absorbing that I kept forgetting to take notes. Berne is a canny writer. Her scenes are elegantly composed, and even throwaway characters jump off the page.
Berne has a gift for navigating the subterranean currents coursing under the skin, and she shares the inner lives of her characters more generously than they — than we — often do with one another.
Berne has created an intriguing portrait of the kind of loneliness that can only exist in a crowd, and given the lie to all those surveys that suggest a place or its community can be summed up by its house prices, crime statistics and performance indicators.
“The Dogs of Littlefield is character-driven but not at a breakneck speed. The writing couldn’t be better or smarter, even if the story is missing adrenaline. The canine murders, all told, are a way in, a comedy of manners with a dabbling in whodunit.
...[a] near-flawless satire of middle-class America. Like John Updike, Evan Connell, Jane Gardam, and other masters of understatement, Berne draws us into the everyday life of an unremarkable place yet maintains an ironic perspective, her keen eye and her laconic wit missing nothing and sparing nobody.
For a novel that has no plot to speak of and simply ends rather than finishing up, Suzanne Berne’s The Dogs of Littlefield is wonderfully entertaining and is, in fact, the funniest (new) book I have read in some time.
Berne is exceedingly good at social commentary. She captures the anxiety that seeps in through the young affluents, the unhappiness that attends those who are supposed to be happy.
Revelations will come, but the real payoff of this novel is getting to know the characters Berne creates. Littlefield is a great place to visit — although you wouldn't want to live there.
