Marley & Me(2008) by John Grogan Genre: Memoir/Humor 4.5/5

There are two types of books. The first type is those which you read, you rave against and consign to the deepest and darkest recesses of your mind and the absolute corner of your personal library. Then there are books like Marley & Me. You read them and you cannot stop dreaming about them. You want to grab the person dearest to you and give him a copy so that he can also experience the magic of this deeply moving and absolutely brilliant book.

I have tried to get a copy of this book for the past four months. However, on most of the sites it is out of stock or available at an exorbitant price. I finally got it for only two hundred bucks two days back and dived right in to it.

The story starts when Grogan and his wife of fifteen months, Jenny, decide to get themselves a dog. They have a theory to find out whether a dog is pusillanimous or brave and they end up zeroing in(or is it the other way around?) on a small pup who they eventually name Marley. 

This is a biographical memoir written by John Grogan. He recounts, as the book’s subtitle goes, life and love with the world’s worst dog. It is also autobiographical in nature as Grogan interlinks the story of Marley with his family.

The “worst dog” in this case is the absolutely marvelous Marley, a Labrador retriever. He is a dog who “suffers” from the human equivalent of attention disorder. He is a ball of energy who is hyper excited all the time. 

Grogan is a writer who presently writes for the Philadelphia Enquirer and it shows in the way he describes the different and always amusing situations which Marley leads the family into. The book is easy to relate to due to Grogan’s mastery of the matter and his love for Marley shines through on every page. 

It left me with moist eyes and I recommend this to anybody who loves to read. Marley is an impossible to resist character and I am sure the reader would derive as much joy as I did after going through Marley & Me.