The Boss Dog

A bewildered American mother and her two daughters spend an adventurous year in Aix-en-Provence, where an aloof mutt presides at the family’s favorite cafés.

An essential treat for lovers of the work of M.F.K. Fisher, The Boss Dog is a fictionalized memoir of the author’s time in the south of France. It follows a young American woman and her two daughters as they embark on a new life in Aix-en-Provence. We encounter the food, moods, landscapes, and people of this new place, all refracted through Fisher’s light, angular prose, and most importantly, we make the acquaintance of the canine impresario the family simply calls “the boss dog.” A fixture of the local bistros, boîtes, and cafés, he serves as a tutelary spirit of this blessed corner of provincial France, watching with wise distance the buzzing human dramas about him and serving as a guide to the young family. This charming book delights with its portrait of a family trying to find its footing in a new place, but will live on in readers’ memories for its quiet and moving observation of the fatigues of displacement and rootlessness—wearinesses easily assuaged by the buoyant effect of a stalwart companion Fisher describes as “the doggiest dog anyone ever saw.”