Dog Days

Harvey Award winner Gendry-Kim (The Waiting) delivers a poignant semi-autobiographical graphic novel about a couple who love dogs, in a small town that often does not. Yuna and her husband, Hun, move from Seoul to the countryside for their anxious dog Carrot’s benefit (after dosing Carrot with Prozac doesn’t do the trick). There they meet their new puppy, Potato, as well as a series of other dogs whom they briefly befriend. Not everyone sees dogs as family members, though, in this alternately welcoming and insular rural community. One monsoon day, Yuna and Hun catch their neighbor slicing up charred dog meat. Later, they encounter a truck soliciting dogs for processing—the local industry of turning canines into medicine or soju is an “open secret.” (In the afterword, Gendry-Kim acknowledges that earlier generations faced food scarcity, and expresses concern that her narrative could fuel stereotypes.) After they rescue yet another dog, Choco, from a neglectful neighbor, Yuna and Hun later see Choco’s former cage occupied by a new dog, lending the narrative’s final pages a wistful tone. In Gendry-Kim’s windblown pen-and-ink illustrations, the dogs often loom over landscapes or dwarf the narrator, indicating the outsize place they occupy in their humans’ hearts. It’s a clear-eyed ode to the complications of living with both pets and people. Agent: Nicolas Grivel, Nicolas Grivel Agency. (Oct.)