To Night Owl From Dogfish

I love epistolary novels. I think I’ve always loved them; they intrigue me. Off the top of my head, I think about Dear Mrs Naidu, Ketchup Clouds, Daddy Long-Legs and The Night Diary, though I’m sure I’ll think of several more by the time I finish writing this blog post.

To Night Owl from Dogfish is right up there with the best of them. It’s crazy, full of laugh-out-loud humour, and poignant (yes, I did cry over it). Dogfish, aka Bett, loves snooping on her father. She checks his email and discovers that he is in a relationship with Avery’s father, Sam Bloom. In fact, the relationship is so serious that they want their daughters to get to know each other.

Bett writes to Night Owl, aka Avery. It’s a crisis. They don’t want two families to become one! They’re happy by themselves and determined to cast a spoke in their fathers’ wheels.

In the way of stories – and real life – nothing goes according to plan. Bett and Avery are sent away for a camp so that they can bond with each other and become sisters, but they decide not to talk to each other at all because they refuse to become friends, let alone sisters. An email once in a while can’t hurt, though. And then, how can they not share information about their dads? Slowly, they tell each other all about themselves, their families, their dreams …

You may think you can imagine where things go from there, but there’s no way you can predict everything that happens in this book peopled with all kinds of characters from Bett’s grandmother Gaga to Avery’s biological mother Kristina. Letter after letter is exchanged (without seeming at all contrived) through the course of the book and I chuckled, gasped and cried.

Just like in any truly lovely book, there were lines that stood out to me. They made me stop and just take a moment to think about them. Look at this one:

When you think about it doctors + writers aren’t that different. Both of them have to care about living things in order to be any good at their job.

A letter from Bett to Avery, To Night Owl from Dogfish

Another favourite passage comes at a point when Bett overhears two girls talking about how having a gay dad probably damaged the girl. Bett, never one to let things lie, storms out and confronts them, and then writes to her father about the episode. Here’s her father’s reply:

… hated the part with the mean girls. I will contact the camp if you want me to do that. Just let me know. I’m there for you. Always. You don’t have to fight all your own battles. That’s what a dad is for.

A letter from Marlow Devlin to Bett, To Night Owl from Dogfish

This is another book for keeps, a beautiful, beautiful read.