Missing Mooch

Lisa Arsenault is an elementary-school teacher in Ajax, Ontario.

Carl is looking forward to spending the summer on the Magdalen Islands
with his best friend Gary and Dumpling, the dog the two boys share.
However, Carl keeps making unfavorable comparisons between little
Dumpling and Carl’s recently deceased “noble” German shepherd,
Mooch. Dumpling is small and timid and afraid of his own shadow. He’s
terrified of the water, the ferryboat, the seagulls, and everything else
that makes a holiday at the seashore enjoyable. He constantly gets into
scrapes and causes trouble. His inadequacy intensifies Carl’s grief at
the loss of his beloved Mooch. Carl decides to write a biography of
Mooch to commemorate his life.

Some aspects of this book somewhat jarring. First, Carl calls his
mother by her first name, which suggests a sense of distance and lack of
intimacy between them; whether or not that is the case is never
determined. Second, the details of Mooch’s biography are sketchy;
Gauthier has written previous books about Mooch, but this one does not
stand particularly well on its own. Third, the reader senses that Carl
is beginning to become fond of, or at least concerned about, Dumpling,
but this development is not carried through to its logical conclusion. A
tender moment with Dumpling at the end of the book has imposed on it yet
another gratuitous paean of praise to Mooch.

Rather than reflecting the themes of friendship, courage, and grief as
the jacket copy claims, Missing Mooch seems more concerned with
portraying a compulsive fixation. Not recommended.