When a woman whose life has gone sideways takes a 30-day dog-sitting job in New York City, despite not being a dog person, she’s pulled into Manhattan’s chaotic social orbit. This delightfully offbeat story is a heartfelt journey of messy midlife reinvention, filled with sharp humor, quirky characters, and one very judgmental dog.
Recently divorced, newly evicted, and suddenly strapped, Colleen Fitzroy is out of options. She reluctantly agrees to work for former boss, Massimo Locatelli—editor of Savor Magazine—dog sitting his precious Aldo while he’s out of town. At least no one will bother her.
That’s until an endless parade of New Yorkers arrives unannounced, pulling Colleen into their knotty orbit. As she juggles strangers, a high maintenance dog, and her unraveling plans, Massimo takes note of her grit. He offers her a role in an ambitious new venture inside Manhattan’s rarefied restaurant scene—which triggers a shameful secret.
Colleen must confront the life she’s been living—and decide if she has the courage to seize the life that’s long overdue.
My counselling work is all about hope and recovery so as soon as I saw this book on NetGalley I knew it would be for me. We follow Colleen who’s something of a character as she has a total break from her disastrous life to think about what to do next. All she must do is spend one month in her previous boss’s incredible apartment to dog sit his canine companion Aldo. This is complicated by the fact that Massimo once fired her from the magazine he edits. There’s no one else and he must fly to Italy in a hurry to help his cousin and Colleen is the only option. However, Colleen has never had a dog before so this is going to be a steep learning curve. She’s also not that keen on being woken in the middle of the night, having unexpected visitors who let themselves into the apartment with no warning, or spending long FaceTime calls with Massimo so he can spend time with Aldo. She also doesn’t have a lot of time for privileged rich people. She honestly made me laugh and struck me as someone who has been through a lot in her life and has zero fucks left to give. If this were a film I could imagine either Meg Ryan or Renee Zellwegger playing this part to perfection. She has all of her belongings, meagre as they are, with and nowhere to go when Massimo returns. She’s insightful about the position she’s in. She was married to a firefighter who survived 9/11 but contracted terminal lung cancer from the dust at Ground Zero. Having lost the man she loves and struggling with the sense of loss she throws herself into a relationship with a man she describes as a ‘party partner’ – great fun for one night but disastrous in the long term. She thought she’d left grief behind but it came back and hit her twice has hard. This is a definite crossroads, but does she know how to move forward both physically and emotionally?
The change is gradual as she learns to look after the beautiful Aldo and cope with the various visitors to Massimo’s flat. She’s woken in the middle of the night by someone entering the flat and a lot of shouting from the street below. It’s Massimo’s daughter and a boyfriend who won’t take no for an answer. Without missing a beat Colleen opens the window and lets fly with some well chosen warnings. In no uncertain terms he knows to give the apartment a wide berth. Other visitors include a woman called Gloria who appears to be a cleaner, but a very stylish and well-dressed one. There’s also the caretaker of the building, a group of gourmets who hold a supper club despite Massi not being there and various others. At times these interruptions are a little jarring, especially when we’re first trying to get to know Colleen. However, all play their part and slowly Colleen starts to see that Massi’s life might not be as picture perfect as it seems. The gourmets let slip that he may have lost his job at Savor magazine, gossiping about their absent host in a horrible way. Slowly we can see Colleen opening up to people again as she enjoys chatting with Massi’s daughter and when she sees a photo of the supper club she barely recognises herself because she looks engaged and as if she’s truly in the moment. Aldo slowly begins to bond with Colleen as only dogs can, showing he’s now depending on her for comfort. Even Massi starts to make longer phone calls where he’s actually confiding in this women he’d pretty much written off. We can see their similarities in upbringing, with poverty and scarcity of food being the source of their pleasure in food now. In fact food is very sentimental to Colleen who remembers her garden with her husband very fondly, in fact her prize possession is a carrot plan grown directly from the seeds he collected on their vegetable patch. She also does a regular stint at the food bank, making sure children don’t grow up in food poverty and hates what she calls ‘food peacocking’ something that Massi and Savor Magazine do daily. Even though Massi grew up in a poor environment he certainly doesn’t now. When he asks if Colleen has found Aldo’s dog food in the fridge she realises she’s been heating it in the microwave and eating it herself it is so delicious.
The settings are interesting and contrast beautifully. Massi’s apartment is both aspirational and sentimental with his kitchen table covered with the carved names of people who’ve eaten there. He keeps back copies of his magazine in pristine condition, clearly very proud of his position. By contrast the home that Colleen has just left is in a New Jersey suburb, ‘neat and smells like ocean mist and sea salt in the way cheap candles do.’ This is typical of the self-deprecating way Colleen talks about her life, she’s never had the luxury that Massi and his friends take for granted. Manhattan is frenetically busy when compared to the serenity and elegance of Massi’s hotel in Italy. We can even see the difference in the pace of life with city people like little ants, busily scurrying around. Colleen’s back in that pace but struggles to cope with the busy in and out of the apartment and it does interrupt the flow a little. The plot then wanders into different territory as Massi decides to start a business importing truffles for Manhattan restaurants and asks Colleen to be his courier and saleswoman, visiting contacts in their kitchens and selling directly. This was a plot development I really didn’t expect and I suspected there was more to this venture than met the eye.
This book could have been a simply madcap makeover story, but it does tap into deeper themes such as childhood, loss and how we process trauma. I wasn’t sure where the truffle business was going to go but it felt like a great metaphor for humans – even the most dirty and unpromising truffles are treated like gold and Colleen could be seen like that, a treasure underneath those layers of defensiveness and snarky wit. She also learns that people are not what they seem and even those who live very different lives can teach each other something. Rather than do all the cliched things such as yoga and celebrating her ‘me’ period, Colleen actually learns things she didn’t expect like not taking people at face value and of course she learns the joy that a dog like Aldo can bring into your life. The absolute gem of the story though is Colleen herself, a rather chaotic, irritable and closed off person who slowly blossoms.
The Lotus Readers 