Book Review: Returned

Returned, by Amy Gilvary (Amy Gilvary, 66 pages, 2022, $10.99) Review by Skye Anderson*

Read this Book! Over and Over Again!

I needed to read this book. You do too!

I had been reading months of books for national literary awards as a judge and most of those books are not ones I would have chosen for me to spend time with. Most are not light reads so I was ready for a good book like the memoirs I love. 

Big Things Come in Small Packages

I didn't look at the page count until I had this little tome in hand. At first disappointment set in: it is hard to value a book with a price tag larger than the number of pages.

When the book came in the mail, I was disappointed in its littleness, its brevity. That is, until I opened the book and saw what seemed to be a collection of poems that I generally would not choose to read unless I had to. 

But then, I turned to page one and was hooked.

These are mostly one-page essays, word poems, truisms and unforgettable stories.

One Good Book

Every once in a while I find a book so good that I start the review before I have finished reading. Returned is one such book. 

Are these poems or short essays? It doesn't matter because I will keep this book! Other books that I receive to review I donate to rescues or shelters but not this one.

Author Amy Gilvary spent years learning her craft, working in shelters, and it shows. She knows what it's like and she knows how the dogs feel and live and love.

Returned

What can one say about a topic like 'returned'? We know what it means, thanks to the front cover of a dog's sad face behind a chain link fence. But how can one person write 53 stories or poems about 'returned' and have each of them be unique gems?

Returned is a book not many can read in one setting: I certainly could not. Yet, something clicked within me when I finished a page and I said, "Right on!  She knows what she is talking about. She has lived it."

The Dog on the Cover

So, tell me about the dog on the cover, EveryDog. He (or she) is wearing a collar - why? And one eye is blue while the other is brownish yet this Everydog is not Nordic from the coloring on his face and his freckles. 

Have you ever been so enthralled with a book that you look up the author and want to meet him/her? I have. She is a singer/songwriter - of course! That makes sense.

And would you believe for the 53 chapters, I "dogeared" 22 of them?

*Returned won the Dog Writers Association of America (DWAA) award for books on rescues or adoptions in 2022 and the recipient of the Maxwell Medallion.

For samples of the writings, see Dogwise.