Topical Guide 1033
Mark Dorset
Reviews: Inflating a Dog
“[An] often hilarious bittersweet tale of adolescence recollected in tranquility . . . a kaleidoscopic narrative that’s a little like a marriage of Marcel Proust and Mark Twain. . . . Peter’s determination to explore all the mysteries of environment, heredity, and (especially) sex is memorably expressed. Glorious stuff.”
Kirkus Reviews, (starred review)
“A cheeky, amusing look at the nature of the entrepreneurial dream. . . . Once Kraft begins to work his clever conceit, this novel emerges as another memorable installment in his innovative series.”
Publishers Weekly
“Sentimental, loving, raucous, wise, and great fun, this is simply not to be missed.”
Nancy Pearl, Booklist (starred review)
“Two-thousand-two-hundred pages . . . and counting. That, by my estimate, is where Eric Kraft’s shape-shifting, seriocomic, multi-volume Peter Leroy saga now stands. And with Kraft in such fine form in Inflating a Dog, the latest installment, one can’t help wishing Peter’s story could continue forever.”
Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
“Reading Eric Kraft is at times like taking a dizzy tumble into Long Island Sound. As fine a novelist as the Island has produced, Kraft is the buoyant and brilliant presence behind . . . ‘The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy’ . . . as richly detailed in its way as, and a great deal funnier than . . . Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” . . . Digressions on clamming, the constitution of the soul and Bernoullian physics are tossed off with such verve and humor that the reader feels flattered and privileged to be invited to join Kraft’s remarkable, ongoing dance of time and memory.”
Richard Gehr, Newsday
“A hilarious riff on Don Quixote, on the desire for fame, the need for success, the power of fantasy.”
Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe
“As books by Eric Kraft usually are, Infl ating a Dog is simultaneously delightful, provocative, poignant and deeply satisfying . . . packed to the gunwales with the incendiary hungers, slippery bravado and rampant uncertainties of adolescence. . . . proves once again that Eric Kraft is a writer of magical verbal and narrative invention. The novel’s various threads, its complications of character and plot, its reality-bending notions of showing and telling snap together, finally, with a gentle, inevitable, tear-inducing click. . . . Inflating a Dog is downright elevating.”
Frederic Koeppel, Memphis Commercial Appeal
“A sprightly, sly, sophisticated entertainment, light enough to digest in a long summer evening . . . quintessential Kraft, showing his regard for the word-as-object, a thing to be revealed at just the right moment, then left for the reader to examine.”
Richard Grant, The Washington Post
“The eight volumes of . . . The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy constitute perhaps the most ambitious and rewarding literary enterprise of our time. . . . Inflating a Dog comes across as a deceptively easy read in which expert comic timing belies an enormously important literary project in motion. The clever mingling of fiction and memoir evokes Proust at every turn but does so using a vernacular attuned to contemporary audiences. Even when you find yourself laughing aloud, it would be a mistake to take Eric Kraft lightly.”
Andrew Ervin, The San Francisco Chronicle
“Inflating a Dog, the latest Peter Leroy volume, is a novel about physical and spiritual buoyancy. It’s about keeping boats afloat and hopes aloft, and how, in one summer of Peter’s adolescence, he manages to do both. . . . Kraft’s erudite asides and abstract musings are what make Inflating a Dog fascinating and sophisticated reading.”
Jennifer Reese, The New York Times Book Review
“Inflating a Dog has a charming plot that works as an overlay for sophisticated meditations on language and storytelling. . . . It sounds simple enough, yet the novel is wickedly funny and philosophical and weirdly timeless.”
Kate Bernheimer, The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon
Subscribe to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
Share The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
Watch Well, What Now? This series of short videos continues The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy in the present.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, Where Do You Stop?, What a Piece of Work I Am, and At Home with the Glynns.
You can buy hardcover and paperback editions of all the books at Lulu.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.