Grogan’s account of choosing then living with a golden retriever they named Marley is at times hilarious and other times rueful. Skillful writer that he is, Grogan makes the difficult part of his life something to smile at.
The story is in the telling and Grogan tells a good tale. We laugh at his story, not at the tribulations with this destructive canine.
With his uncontrollable energy, Marley ripped, crashed, mangled everything in sight. Flowers, it seemed, could not be left alone. Grogan took his dog to town and returned with a bouquet for his wife. He had selected a large mix of daisies, mums, lilies and carnations. But there were no carnations.
“I looked more closely and found the decapitated stems that minutes earlier had held blossoms. Nothing else in the bouquet was disturbed. I glared at Marley and he was dancing around like he was auditioning for Soul Train. “Get over here!” I yelled, and when I finally caught him and pried open his jaws, I found the incontrovertible evidence of his guilt.”
When Jenny was suffering postpartum depression after the couple’s second child, she focused her frustration on Marley. As the author returned from work one day, “I opened the front door to find Jenny beating Marley with her fists. She was crying uncontrollably and flailing wildly at him, more like she was pounding a kettledrum than imposing a beating, landing glancing blows on his back and shoulders and neck.”
The simple act of raking leaves in the Fall takes on the air of an attack from a very sneaky foe. “Only after I had gathered a mighty towering pile would he slink forward, crouched low. Every few steps, he would stop, front paw raised, to sniff the air like a lion on the Serengeti stalking an unsuspecting gazelle.”
The reader knows what will happen next, but it’s in the reading that we take the pleasure. We want to read how Marley utterly demolishes the leaf pile, smile, and sigh in the pure delectation of reading fine prose.
Of course, with all the trouble Marley caused the Grogan household, they loved him. In his old age, the family left Marley with the vet while they vacationed at Disney World. “That night as we finished packing, both Jenny and I commented on how strange it felt to be in a dog-free zone.”
In December 2008, Grogan’s tale came out as a movie with Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson, setting the largest box office for Christmas Day.
Marley and Me is a fun read just because Grogan makes it fun. It will hard to forget a dog that caused so much trouble for a family.
Marley & Me—Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan (2005) is published by Harper and available from amazon.com.
