duncan b. barlow delivers tender shocks and the profundity of mercy in this poignant, delicate novel of loss and love. A Dog Between Us holds the reader between what can be said and what is unspeakable in our most vital relationships. this is an unforgettable novel of beauty and delirium.
A Dog Between Us is duncan b. barlow’s second critically acclaimed novel with Stalking Horse Press.
The novel is available at all good bookstores, directly from our online store, or from Bookshop, Amazon, etc.
“Early on, the narrator of Duncan Barlow’s moving A Dog Between Us offers a rule to live by: never state the important things. Lucky for us readers, this is a rule broken on every single page of this beautiful novel, a book haunted by the details of dying and grief, by the ways in which every once-hidden mote of a lost life’s minutiae can, once revealed, be made to shine, to glow, give back fresh heat and new light.” —Matt Bell, author of Scrapper and In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods
“Duncan Barlow traces the sharpened edge of his flawless language across the living flesh of story in ‘A Dog Between Us’, and every page bleeds raw, human feeling. Connection, companionship, compassion, the nature of living itself is excised from the inevitability of death, held up to the harsh light, and examined. All love ends, we find, all of us are flawed, and each of us will return to earth, but there is beauty, and tenderness.” — Sarah Gerard, Author of Binary Star and Sunshine State
“A Dog Between Us is a loving and moving novel of heartbreaking loss that is also beautifully written—and it is through this beauty that Duncan Barlow provides the reader with some great comfort too.” —Michael Kimball, author of ‘big ray’ and ‘us’
“In A Dog Between Us we are asked, “What words outline a human life?” If we could read the lines cast around our edges – our janky and shining, beautiful and hell-filled edges – what might we divine? Duncan Barlow’s compelling novel gives us a hint: it has something to do with generosity and fever; that moment when the shadows of the words that outline a life turn into a cloud of blackbirds. They break open your heart upon their sudden departure from the field where you believed so long you were standing alone.” —Selah Saterstrom, author of Slab and Ideal Suggestions
