Review | Book review: pet’s death spurs failed screenwriter to become novelist
In Steven Rowley’s debut novel, his beloved dachshund Lily is the hero and must fight the Octopus – the tumour growing inside her
By Steven Rowley
Simon and Schuster
Lily and the Octopus is the first novel by Steven Rowley. Having struggled to make his mark as a screenwriter (Rowley was unsuccessful enough to require a second job as a paralegal), he turned to fiction. The emotional spur was the death of Rowley’s beloved dachshund, Lily, now the hero of the novel. Like the real Lily, the fictional canine is dying of a tumour, re-imagined as a euphemistic octopus: “The octopus looks angry as much as out of place. Aggressive perhaps is a better word … I’m not going to lie. It’s as frightening as it is confounding.” This is Lily’s owner, Ted Flask, who spends the story trying and failing to save his best friend and accommodate himself to the reality of her ending. It doesn’t help when the octopus begins to talk, of course. Ted’s struggles are often very funny. The scene when he feeds Lily an octopus is bleakly hilarious: “I have an aunt Iris,” the tumour wails. By the end, you will have tears streaming down your face, in the best possible way. A lovely, lovely, lovely book.
