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The Black Dog
For The Economist online, I wrote about Rebecca Hunt’s deeply funny debut novel, Mr. Chartwell:
The black dog. Just where did Winston Churchill get his famous metaphor for depression? From Arthur Conan Doyle and his diabolical Baskerville hound? Or perhaps from Samuel Johnson, who in 1783 wrote, “when I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it, from breakfast to dinner he continues barking.”
What about “Beowulf”?
Whatever its origins, Churchill’s black dog quickly went from being a private quip to a cliché: stranded, toothless and damp. Rebecca Hunt, an artist and writer based in London, explores the comic possibilities of the metaphor’s lost snarl in her debut novel, “Mr Chartwell”. The book introduces us to Black Pat, “a mammoth muscular dog about six foot seven high” who happens to be the physical embodiment of depression. Oh, and he talks.
Read the entire article here.
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