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Good Boy by Jennifer Finney Boylan
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Good Boy

My Life in Seven Dogs

$20.99

Get for $14.99 with membership
Length 7 hours 43 minutes
Language English
Narrators Jennifer Finney Boylan & Kelsey Navarro

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This program includes an introduction read by the author.

From bestselling author of She’s Not There, New York Times opinion columnist, and human rights activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, a memoir of the transformative power of loving dogs.


This is a book about dogs: the love we have for them, and the way that love helps us understand the people we have been.

It’s in the love of dogs, and my love for them, that I can best now take the measure of the child I once was, and the bottomless, unfathomable desires that once haunted me.

There are times when it is hard for me to fully remember that love, which was once so fragile, and so fierce. Sometimes it seems to fade before me, like breath on a mirror.

But I remember the dogs.

In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking piece went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love.

Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books

Jennifer Finney Boylan is the author of nineteen books, including Mad Honey, coauthored with Jodi Picoult. Her memoir, She’s Not There, was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. Since 2014, she has been the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University; she is also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference of Middlebury College and the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She is the President of PEN America, and from 2011 to 2018 she was a member of the Board of Directors of GLAAD, including four years as national cochair. In 2022-23 she was a Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She graduated from Wesleyan University and Johns Hopkins, and she holds doctorates honoris causa from Sarah Lawrence College, the New School, and Wesleyan University. For many years she was a contributing opinion writer for the opinion section of the New York Times. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Literary Hub, Down East, and many other publications. She lives in Maine and New York with her wife, Deirdre. They have two children: a daughter, Zai, and a son, Sean.

Jennifer Finney Boylan is the author of nineteen books, including Mad Honey, coauthored with Jodi Picoult. Her memoir, She’s Not There, was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. Since 2014, she has been the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University; she is also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference of Middlebury College and the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She is the President of PEN America, and from 2011 to 2018 she was a member of the Board of Directors of GLAAD, including four years as national cochair. In 2022-23 she was a Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She graduated from Wesleyan University and Johns Hopkins, and she holds doctorates honoris causa from Sarah Lawrence College, the New School, and Wesleyan University. For many years she was a contributing opinion writer for the opinion section of the New York Times. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Literary Hub, Down East, and many other publications. She lives in Maine and New York with her wife, Deirdre. They have two children: a daughter, Zai, and a son, Sean.

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Audiobook details

ISBN:
9781250263742

Length:
7 hours 43 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Macmillan Audio

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

Libro.fm rank:
#20,710 Overall

Genre rank:
#76 in LGBTQIA+ Nonfiction

Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

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Reviews

"Pushed center stage for this history, the pets--who are often in the background in our lives--can be seen to exert an outsized influence. While capable of high theatricality, Navarro here employs the voice of a woman more amused than outraged. Adoration may be mysterious, but Navarro's quiet performance generates that precious nectar, and plenty of it." -- Audiofile Magazine

Good Boy is a warm, funny, instantly engaging testament to the power of love—canine and human—to ease us through life’s radical transitions. And I say that as a cat person!”
Jennifer Egan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, and Manhattan Beach

“They say a dog is man’s best friend…but what about a trans woman? Boylan’s gorgeously crafted homage to our unconditional love of dogs turns out to be much less of a paean to her constant canine companions, and much more of a journey through her own psyche and the moral needle of the world we live in. What do we keep, even as we lose pieces of ourselves? The dog at your feet while you’re reading already knows the answer.”
Jodi Picoult, #1 NYT bestselling author of A Spark of Light and Small Great Things

"Beautiful, tender, and utterly engaging, Good Boy measures out Boylan's life in dog years. The result is a gorgeous memoir, full of heart and insight."
Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book

"Jenny Boylan has given us a story full of humor, earned wisdom, and large doses of unconditional love. Beautifully written, wise, and funny, Good Boy is a gift to us all—but especially the dog lovers."
Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours

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