Author(s): Elizabeth McKenzie

2023 Women's Prize for Fiction long list | Crime and Thriller | Humour & Satire

Penny Rush has problems. Freshly divorced from her mobile knife-sharpener husband, she has returned home to Santa Barbara to deal with her grandfather, who is being moved into a retirement home by his cruel second wife.

Her grandmother, meanwhile, has been found in possession of a sinister sounding weapon called 'the scintilltor' and something even worse in her woodshed.

Penny's parents have been missing in the Australian outback for many years now, and so Penny must deal with this spiralling family crisis alone.

Enter The Dog of The North. The Dog of the North is a borrowed van, replete with yellow gingham curtains, wood panelling, a futon, a pinata, clunky brakes and difficult steering.

It is also Penny's getaway car from a failed marriage, a family in crisis and an uncertain future. This darkly, dryly comic novel follows Penny as she sets out in The Dog to find a way through the curveballs life has thrown at her and in doing so, find a way back to herself.

Review:

'Even funnier, even more romantic than McKenzie's wonderful last, The Portable Veblen. You will be surprised, delighted, and grateful to be aboard The Dog of the North with the admirable Penny Rush as she faces every challenge her wild and crazy family can throw at her. A book that lifts the spirits.' Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

'Darkly absurd and slyly insightful. A genuinely comic novel and a potent, poignant investigation into grief and the myriad ways we flailingly, failingly attempt to avoid the pains of loss. Miranda Popkey, author of Topics of Conversation

'Gloriously entertaining, intelligent, presented with great insight and skill. An exuberant comedy of human behaviour at its nuttiest.' The Times

Author Biography: Elizabeth McKenzie is the author of the novel The Portable Veblen, long listed for the 2016 National Book Award. Her collection, Stop That Girl, was short listed for The Story Prize, and her novel MacGregor Tells the World was a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Library Journal Best Book of the year. She is the editor of My Postwar Life: New Writings from Japan and Okinawa. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, and has been recorded for NPR's Selected Shorts.