The narrator of this novel, sometimes called X after an embarrassing first name that he never uses and is difficult to pronounce, works in New York in a legal firm and has a long term relationship with Jenn (not short for anything). After a bitter break up with Jenn he accepts a job in the UAE in Dubai from an old friend and is thrown into an expat life. The family he works for have the arrogance of the very wealthy and never answer his emails and provide little support, just a posh office and a large salary. The job is difficult to grasp, boring and certainly doesn't fill his day. The day dreaming and immersion in personal projects will be familiar to anyone who has had a job that doesn't fill the hours you are required to turn up. The reader learns about life in UAE through his relationship with his assistant, Ali, who does not have UAE citizenship, through the young intern that is foisted on him, through prostitutes and through the other expats and scuba diving mates. The luxurious buildings are described, how the financial crash impacted in the UAE, the clear waters and just occasionally he goes outside into the heat. There is a small mystery when a man who lives in his block, called The Situation, disappears and his American wife turns up to look for him. Joseph O'Neill has lots of fun with words, X, Jenn is not short for anything and The Situation are all part of this playfulness but it is also a rambling novel as the narrator meanders through his days, each one not disimilar to the last. I got some sense of Dubai and UAE but a limited version. Overall, despite the obvious cleverness of this novel I didn't find it held my attention and there were no characters I was really attached to. ( )

Life in Dubai is different from life in New York. This is one of many lessons the unnamed narrator of Joseph O’Neill’s novel The Dog learns in his time as an American ex-pat in the Middle East. O’Neill’s narrator has gone there, less as a career move than as a salve for the injury (emotional and financial) inflicted by his acrimonious breakup with his lover Jenn, a breakup he instigated when he realized, after years together, that he didn’t want to raise a family with her. The two are employed as lawyers for the same Manhattan firm, but after the collapse of their relationship the close daily proximity becomes an intolerable pressure point that forces him to take drastic measures. Then a chance encounter results in him being recruited for a lucrative job in Dubai as “family officer” for the wealthy and powerful Batros family whose network of businesses has global reach. His responsibilities are fluid and entail looking out for the family’s interests, navigating the intricacies of Emirates corporate law, approving and rubber-stamping documents he can’t even pretend to understand, and (unexpectedly, annoyingly) minding/babysitting the sullen, unambitious teenage son of one of the Batros brothers, who is foisted on him as a summer “intern.” In the meantime, he finds diverting ways to spend his off hours (scuba diving, pedicures, prostitutes). The work is often tedious and anything but fulfilling, giving him plenty of freedom to wonder what he’s doing with his life and obsess over extraneous matters, such the abandoned building site next door to his apartment and the puzzling disappearance of another American ex-pat, Ted Wilson, a scuba diver who’s been christened with the nickname “The Man from Atlantis.” Our narrator also has a lively imagination, and even though he’s lavishly paid and repeatedly assured he’s a valued member of the Batros team, he feels he’s always playing catch-up, operating in the dark and from a position where crucial information is withheld. This is the novel’s central motif. O’Neill’s narrator is The Dog, consigned to internal exile: a friendless state of not knowing, repeatedly missing the point, perpetually on the outside looking in. When he learns of unfortunates known as “bidoons”—stateless individuals who have arrived in various Persian Gulf countries seeking work, who remain for years without papers or citizenship, who labour at menial jobs for a pittance, who belong nowhere but are unable to leave—the parallel with the narrator becomes apparent. O’Neill’s sardonic, high-octane narrative propels a story that is peppered with absurdities and often raucously funny. But numerous digressions and lengthy narrative detours can, and do, test the reader’s patience. In The Dog, Joseph O’Neill seems to suggest that mankind’s moral and intellectual progress has been compromised by a slavish pursuit of wealth and the endless parade of meaningless trivialities that can so easily dominate our daily agenda. But O’Neill is also clever and insightful, which is enough to convince the reader that his book is not just another of those trivialities that we would do well to ignore. ( )

Really enjoyed this--as with Netherland, more thinking than plot/action, but very funny and the Dubai setting is fascinating. ( )

Strange book. The protagonist, who has no name, takes on the job of overseeing transactions in a company owned by two brothers. One brother is a former classmate, although not a friend.

To do this job, our hero has to live in Dubai. So we learn some interesting things about this strange place of luxury, from how easy it is to get what you want to how easy it is to be thrown out.

Our hero is a lawyer and cautious. Thus he comes up with many ways to proclaim his lack of liability when he signs approvals. He is proud of his carefully-crafted language. For while he generally trusts this former classmate, he doesn't trust his brother.

The story is interesting although fairly straightforward. What is more interesting is the internal life led by the speaker. He ruminates on everything, and speaks in fluent parentheses, often many nested parens and pages with no paragraph breaks.

I had some difficulty figuring out exactly where he stood - was he being sly, clever, or was he genuinely a caring, thoughtful person? There may be a clue in the title, for it is himself, the dog. ( )

Would love to have loved this book because there are moments when it shines like oil, but it just had too few moments, too little consequence (and too many (embedded and unnecessary) parentheses). At times this is very funny and intriguing but it just failed to engage me on the whole. ( )