The Last Days of Dogtown
by Anita Diamant
Pan, $90
'There was once such a hamlet,' writes Anita Diamant of Dogtown, Massachusetts, the godforsaken outpost on which she centres her novel. And a local pamphlet, 'Dogtown: A Village Lost in Time', may still be available in bookshops around the area. But, she warns, The Last Days of Dogtown is for the best part fiction - lest readers mistake fancy for fact. That admission should in no way detract from the importance of a book that dissects the destructiveness of society. Just as the people of Dogtown are regarded as misfits by people elsewhere, within its own community there are biases that splinter rather than cement a community crafting its own demise. Pillars are Easter Carter, whose inn serves as an arena for neighbours to pay their last respects when death takes another villager, and Judy Rhines, who keeps secret her love for one of the village's only two black members. Although set in the 19th century, the novel underscores similarities rather than differences among people then and now, and there and here. This is why readers should come away feeling they've learned something, even if the book has little to do with history.