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“A fine, complex portrait of a
modern-day soul in despair.”
— Oprah.com
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“This novel is often
wonderfully droll, especially in its portrayal of the oddities of a city whose
‘mission is to make itself indistinguishable from its airport.’ Also, always
amusing are the protagonist’s mentally composed emails, never-to-be-sent
missives in which he lists all of his grievances like an office-computer
version of Saul Bellow’s Herzog."
— Entertainment Weekly
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“With consummate elegance, The Dog turns in on itself in
imitation of the dreadful circling and futility of consciousness itself.
Its subplots go nowhere, as in life. But, unlike life, its wit and brio
keep us temporarily more alive than we usually allow ourselves to be.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“Every page of The Dog is a little masterpiece of
comedy, erudition, and linguistic acrobatics.”
— Washington Post
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“More than a
comic novel. The writing is brisk and funny, but O’Neill is also
exploring deep questions about ethics and happiness in a globalized age
of instant information and economic inequality. His narrator is a
fascinating creation: charming and repugnant, selfless and
self-absorbed, erudite and steeped in popular culture.”
— Chicago Tribune
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"The Dog is a brilliant satir…[O’Neill] has a fabulous ear for
language, as good as nearly anyone in American literature.”
— Boston Globe
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“As he did brilliantly in Netherland, O’Neill, in his latest,
creates a character who is alienated from his home and social class, and
who feels dangerously vulnerable in a country in which he lives a
luxurious but precarious existence…Clever, witty, and profoundly insightful, this is a beautifully crafted narrative about a man undone by a soulless society.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“A humorous meditation on the dialectics of attention and distraction in
the modern world, O’Neill’s work playfully skewers the global economy of
consumption and our abstract notions of responsibility in its
perpetuation.”
— Library Journal (starred review)
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“Lost love impels a New York lawyer to try to change his life with a job overseas…Shades of Kafka and Conrad permeate O’Neill’s thoughtful modern fable of exile.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“A manically ruminative tale narrated by an
anxious, lonely, and mordantly funny attorney who leaves New York in
2007 to work for his college roommate Eddie Batros’ Lebanese family as
trustee of their immense fortune…O’Neill has created a bravura and astringent tale
about conscience, entrapment, and the power and limits of language as
the vehicle for morality.”
— Booklist