Joint Custody by Lauren Baratz-Logsted & Jackie Logsted

Narrated by Barrett Leddy

I’m a sucker for a book involving a dog and when that dog is a border collie it’s even more guaranteed I’ll want to read (or listen) to it. Joint Custody is told entirely from the perspective of Gatz, a 22-pound (and small for his breed) border collie owned by “the man” and “the woman”. It’s a device which won’t work for everyone but for those who love dogs, it’s a fair bet there’s some fun to be had here.

Gatz is the only named character in the book. All of the others are “the man” or “tall one” or “the blonde”. I guess that may be how a dog would characterise people – who can say really? I admit I’d probably have preferred to have at least Gatz’s owners and a few other characters named however.

Gatz is very erudite, particularly for a dog and there is obviously a large suspension of disbelief needed to go along with the story. I didn’t have any trouble with this bit – I’ve certainly gone along with stranger premises and the payoff was worth it.

The same day “the man” picks Gatz at the rescue shelter when Gatz is only a puppy, they meet “the woman”. The beginning of the book tracks their love story, in vignettes moving forward over the following three years, until the relationship breaks down and the pair share custody of Gatz. Even though technically Gatz is solely owned by “the man”, “the woman” has been in his life from the beginning and loves him too. So, “the woman” has Gatz on weekends and “the man” has him during the week. It becomes Gatz’s mission in life to reunite his beloved people and he goes to great efforts to do so.

The story is, apart from the obvious, not the usual romance story and it went to unexpected places. I won’t give away here what those places are, but I will say that I ended up very satisfied. I can reassure listeners there is a happy ending.

Gatz has a few lessons of his own to learn and I appreciated that he had his own arc over the course of the story too. There were some sections which are related as stories Gatz hears (as he wasn’t present to witness the events himself), as told by either “the man” or “the woman” to others and then related as if they were third person omniscient and those portions didn’t quite fit for me. While I saw the story reason for those parts to be there it did kind of break the narrative device the entire book was based on.

Barrett Leddy narrates and he does a wonderful job of voicing Gatz’s personality and infusing him with “thoughts of dog”. There is good character differentiation among the other main characters too – “the woman” has a slight British accent and this helps to make her easier to separate out from others.

Joint Custody is warm and fluffy and comedic and Mr. Leddy had excellent timing and a very upbeat tone. It was ridiculously easy to imagine Gatz doing his various antics as I heard about them. I can imagine that it would make an entertaining movie as well actually.

I thought the story dragged a little in the later third and the dog-as-narrator device did wear just a bit thin toward the end, but overall, I enjoyed the story and the narration and I really appreciated the twist in the tail (see what I did there?).

Kaetrin

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