It may be surprising to learn, considering the cover and recent media coverage of Fatima Bhutto’s new memoir, that the first animal to appear in the text is a wild deer not her illustrious dog, the viral Jack Russell Terrier, Coco. Bhutto, an acclaimed journalist and writer, recounts the tale of how she was ‘thrown to the dogs’ by an insidious romance with a narcissist she only refers to as ‘the man’. We join her in finding solace in the nuzzling embraces, unconditional attention and defiant love that only her canine friend can provide. Published by Daunt Publishing, The Hour of the Wolf explores the author’s symbolic relationship with animals and is certainly worthy of many dog-eared pages.
Germinating from an essay published by Granta in February 2022, it’s a true work for the wild. In this expanded form, Bhutto encloses a new but still brief, recollection of the most private of events and ever so carefully constructs a work that lays bare all the chaos of the COVID years, a second memorial to the assassination of her father Murtaza Bhutto and multiple elegies to the landscapes of Spain, Italy and the UK.
With a supernatural elegance, Bhutto presents a grief observed, investigated for its mysterious arrival at the hands of a man and its cessation in the loving eyes of Coco, her dog. She ties her own special form of animal therapy to an in-depth history of how humans have needed and will continue to need dogs for years to come.
Chapter Four is but one of many excellent examples. “If the covenant between humans and dogs is forty thousand years old, why does it feel trivial to me to speak of those bonds?” Not only in this opening sentence does Bhutto set the parameters of her spiritual and pseudo historical examination of man and his best friend but she considers the peculiarity of her recent obsession. Is it strange, for example, to suggest that man and domesticated pet can have a relationship worthy of a purely human one?
Her book is an encyclopaedia for almost everything you need to know about them: an exhaustive account of our shared ancestry; a brochure for their different places within cultures Eastern and Western; a how to guide for when they are pregnant with signposts to look out for when they are giving birth.
The writing is adept – often at its most harrowing moments – in providing the soft warmth of a pet licking your hand or held close in bed at night. The language is razor sharp, unforgiving and supports claims about the world with facts, just like all good stories bordering on journalism should.
It’s both high literature and a personable, honest, stream of consciousness that both works with, and alongside, poetry, scripture and science. One can always spot an acclaimed journalist at the top of their game and Bhutto’s private recount of grief spread out for far too long, over far too many years, should relate to all readers, in all the right ways.
Words by Harry Speirs
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