Briohny Doyle’s WHY WE ARE HERE is a novel which feels like its written for a very specific audience of dog-loving sarcastic people going through loss. The novel is about a woman named BB and her journey through the grief of losing her partner and her father by moving to a new city with her dog in tow. It is a deeply intimate feeling novel, mostly told through the internal reflections of the protagonist.
The book is so internally reflective that it feels like, as a reader, I am intrusively stuck in BB’s mind, buffeted left and right by her thoughts as they come and go. And this is not necessarily a good thing, because I don’t know who BB is at the beginning nor at the end of the novel. I am given very little about her to pique my interest and want to be a fly on the wall in her brain.
BB is not, for example, a serial killer for my morbid curiosity or a famous celebrity who lost it all, or anyone. And it’s not that ordinary people can’t make good stories, but in this case BB does not actually feel like a person. She feels like an object that speaks when you press a button, or in this case when you open the book, she doesn’t feel like a character in her own right in general. You really have to have experienced grief exactly the way she has for her to become real.
The other thing is, you need to be really into dogs to read this book. Dogs feature prominently, in the way that new parents love to talk about their babies, the most mundane of dog interactions are treated as magic in this book, which is absolutely fine for dog lovers and is likely to be insufferably boring for those who aren’t. It’s not all grim, however, as her internal reflections on her loss are often poignant and beautiful, but better served in essay form than a novel as none of it really goes anywhere. And there are moments of humour that are funny, but none of it weaves together in a cohesive satisfying manner.
Review by Tiffany Yuan27 June 2023
Author : Briohny Doyle
Publishing Date : 27 June 2023
ISBN : 9781760899639
Imprint : Vintage Australia
Publisher : Penguin Books
Recommended Retail Price : $32.99
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/why-we-are-here-9781760899639
