Dog Days

Starred review from July 1, 2024
Gendry-Kim's fourth extraordinary title arrives, once again translated by notable Korean Canadian Hong, this time tugging, stressing, nearly breaking the heartstrings of pet lovers. Gendry-Kim's signature black-and-white panels are noticeably darker than light, a foreboding looming throughout. At the Love Pet Shop, a couple purchases a Welsh corgi puppy they name Carrot. Besides a single biting incident, Carrot is the perfect companion to the book's narrator--Gendry-Kim's stand-in--who works from home: "How did we ever live without you?" The couple moves from Seoul "to the countryside near the ocean," and Carrot gets a sibling--Potato--when a puppy appears in a box at their door. Out on their regular walks, the other dogs are most noticeable--tied up, trapped, alone. They can't ignore a traumatized border collie, and Choco joins the growing brood. Most utterly devastating is discovering their seemingly kind neighbor is a dog butcher. "I published Dog Days as a deliberate act of resistance," Gendry-Kim writes in her essential afterword. One of the most significant city-to-village differences, she reports, is the treatment of pets--city dogs are beloved, integral family members; their country counterparts are more likely to be abused, abandoned, killed. She hopes "this book would encourage people to notice and pay attention, even just a little, to the dogs around them. I dreamed of changing the world."

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October 1, 2024

Critically acclaimed cartoonist Gendry-Kim (The Naked Tree) explores the power of unexpected bonds in this touching story of a couple and their growing family of adopted dogs. The narrative follows Yuna, who reluctantly agrees to adopt a corgi puppy named Carrot at her grieving partner's request. Despite Yuna's lifelong aversion to dogs of all kinds and initial doubt that she'll be able to stomach having a canine around the house, Yuna and Carrot quickly form an inseparable bond. In fact, Yuna comes to adore her new pet so dearly that when life in Seoul proves to cause the poor dog anxiety, she agrees to move from the bustling city to a quiet countryside, where she and her partner expand their family to include an abandoned puppy and a traumatized border collie. As their canine collection grows, Yuna and her partner face the challenges of middle age, maintaining a long-term relationship, coping with childlessness, and struggling with feelings of intense isolation following a series of hostile encounters with fellow members of their traditional, rural community. VERDICT A deeply moving story about the healing power of companionship, rendered in strikingly evocative black-and-white brushwork.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 28, 2024
Harvey Award winner Gendry-Kim (The Waiting) delivers a poignant semi-autobiographical graphic novel about a couple who love dogs, in a small town that often does not. Yuna and her husband, Hun, move from Seoul to the countryside for their anxious dog Carrot’s benefit (after dosing Carrot with Prozac doesn’t do the trick). There they meet their new puppy, Potato, as well as a series of other dogs whom they briefly befriend. Not everyone sees dogs as family members, though, in this alternately welcoming and insular rural community. One monsoon day, Yuna and Hun catch their neighbor slicing up charred dog meat. Later, they encounter a truck soliciting dogs for processing—the local industry of turning canines into medicine or soju is an “open secret.” (In the afterword, Gendry-Kim acknowledges that earlier generations faced food scarcity, and expresses concern that her narrative could fuel stereotypes.) After they rescue yet another dog, Choco, from a neglectful neighbor, Yuna and Hun later see Choco’s former cage occupied by a new dog, lending the narrative’s final pages a wistful tone. In Gendry-Kim’s windblown pen-and-ink illustrations, the dogs often loom over landscapes or dwarf the narrator, indicating the outsize place they occupy in their humans’ hearts. It’s a clear-eyed ode to the complications of living with both pets and people. Agent: Nicolas Grivel, Nicolas Grivel Agency.