Ukraine stop the beat

Ouch, sorry for the painful pun but it's Friday. Just a quickie to say that my review of Marina Lewycka's novel Strawberry Fields is in this week's Time Out. Overall I really enjoyed the book and because I had limited space, I opted to focus on the positive. My main beef with Lewycka's rotating POVs is when she gets into a dog's head and writes from its perspective. Those passages are waaaay too cute, but fortunately they're also brief. I have very little patience for literary pets, and pretty much believe they shouldn't be either "authors" (I mean you, Rita Mae Brown, crediting a cat as coauthor) or even subjects (I mean you, Marley). Okay, maybe as subjects but only peripheral ones—not every writer is Jack London.