What happens when nothing happens? Maryanne wonders in A Year of Cats and Dogs, a darkly funny yet hopeful novel about a woman in midlife who feels surrounded by death. She answers her own question by deciding to find out. "I wanted to embrace entropy, to stop working so hard at keeping things up, to go AWOL from the productive world I d so long been a part of, she tells us at the beginning of the novel. The clearer it became that Phillip wasn t coming back the more I wanted to hurry up and let things go just to see what would happen." As it turns out, a lot happens. Even as Maryanne's world slows down and comes apart, curious revelations begin to emerge about the daily life she's formerly taken for granted. She discovers she can hear the thoughts of animals, starting with her own opinionated dog and cat.
