Inevitably the Gekoski marriage falls apart, and it is during the divorce proceedings that everything changes for the author. The process begins with a terrible shock, when his wife insists on keeping every single one of the books he has spent a lifetime collecting. At first reeling with horror, convinced he will never recover from the loss, he suddenly realises he is free. He leaves the academic milieu in which he never felt at home, abandons the work on Lawrence which he has come to hate, produces his first catalogue of antiquarian books, remarries, and, crucially, starts writing for the first time in his own, distinctive, quintessentially American voice.
It is this voice that makes Outside of a Dog so irresistibly appealing. Rick Gekoski is a superb narrator, vivid, colloquial, funny and tough. He is an inspiring literary critic, engaging vigorously with his chosen texts; and he has a novelist’s gift for creating character. It is his own character, of course, which dominates the book, and despite his clear-sightedness over his numerous failings — ‘thoroughly childish … fidgety, noisy and attention-seeking … greedy, over-anxious to please and easily hurt, competitive and self-referring’ — he has the reader enthusiastically on his side every step of the way.
Selina Hastings’s latest book, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham will be published next week by John Murray.
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