The Dog of the North

ERIN SOMERS, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"The plot gallops along, leaning heavily on people going to the hospital ... The zaniness is occasionally exhausting ... If you can bear with it through these high jinks, the heart of the book concerns Penny's parents ... This is the sweet, yet cautionary note the book ends on. The past is a sinkhole, it seems to say. It'll swallow you, if you're not careful, and your Land Cruiser, too."

KATE SAUNDERS, THE TIMES (UK)

"The events that unfold around the narrator of this gloriously entertaining novel are wild and ridiculous but always strangely believable. Elizabeth McKenzie...creates characters constantly teetering on the edge of a swamp of absurdity ... In case you think I'm giving away too much, I have barely scratched the surface of the novel's splendid plot. For some reason a talent for plotting is rather dismissed these days, as if making stuff up was easy, but all writers of fiction know it is the backbone of a good novel, and McKenzie is an excellent plotter."