Lily and The Octopus
Stephen Rowley
321 pages
Published 2016
🦴🦴🦴🦴
My second “old” review for Pride month.
This is the story of a lonely gay writer, Ted, and his elderly dachshund, Lily, who live in LA, and what happens when he discovers an octopus on her head. This is not a children’s book, and it’s very rapidly obvious what the octopus is, so you need to know this is going to get sad.
I loved the first half – the story of how he came to adopt Lily, anecdotes about their lives, his past relationship, their date nights – which are so much more enjoyable than his awkward “real” dates. The second half got weird. Ted becomes obsessed with the octopus and for a while I wondered whether too much booze and too many pills have taken their toll with an induced psychosis, or even whether the octopus is actually in Ted’s head – and this section goes on too long for comfort – but then reality resumes and the inevitable ending, and just as inevitable epilogue, are moving and true to life, but hopeful.
Several reviews warned I would cry, and I did, three times: first, tears of laughter near the beginning, then a small sniff when Ted’s mother, to whom he won’t express love in case she doesn’t return it, tells him she’s sent him a cheque for as much as she can afford for Lily’s vet bill. The last was the expected one, but mainly because it brought back memories of losing beloved cats. So overall, I enjoyed this – and I think this would appeal to anyone who has truly loved a dog or cat, but it does have flaws; Ted is quite an annoying character and while he means well, I wouldn’t want to be related to him. 3.5 rounded up, because I can’t remember the last time I laughed til I cried.
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