"Stream-of-consciousness fiction with a satisfying emotional weight: another intriguing experiment in narrative voice from Savage."
Kirkus Reviews "[S]am Savage ... Gave us a reworked excerpt of his fourth novel ... If I'd had the novel three months earlier, I would have offered to make a special issue, or to run it as a serial."
Lorin Stein, Interview in The Rumpus "[An] elegiac, ... Read morearticulate tale."
Publishers Weekly "With paragraphs as rich as koans, this is as powerful a meditation on living life
and facing its end
as you are likely to read anytime soon."
Booklist, starred review "The Way of the Dog is perhaps [Savage's] best novel yet ... It's as if Savage has rolled Bukowski's Henry Chinaski, Ellison's Invisible Man and Dostoevsky's Underground Man into a more forgiving modern observer."
Shelf Awareness "Savage is going strong, and The Way of the Dog may be his best book yet."
Shelf Awareness for Readers "Savage ... has created something of a late-life oeuvre examining the interior world of the end years of life ... and once again we are treated to this writer's uniquely unflinching, painful yet beautiful examination of an aging, regretful intellectual and how a life story rarely has a logical ending that makes the beginning and middle parts make sense."
The Star Tribune "The Way of the Dog is a deeply felt meditation on the ability to find peace as we age and how our existential dread can be turned into something sublime and meaningful."
Kansas City Star "Savage's writing is full of wickedly off-beat humor while disquietingly delivering spot-on characters who represent the ails of America (and American fiction)."
Hot Metal Bridge "The Way of the Dog is Savage's most elegiac, tender novel to date ... For this besieged but genuine artist and writer, grace arrives as a second chance to appreciate, in what time he has left, the fact that life
and art
is never about getting everything right."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Savage manages to get his readers emotionally invested and questions the idea of 'progression' in the arts, yet he also highlights the importance of art and the inner peace it can bring."
The Badger Herald (Madison, WI) "Sam Savage has crafted a rich and thought-provoking small masterpiece."
Shelf Unbound "[T]he startling clarity and unrestrained candor of Nivenson's remarks yield a deeply registering performance ... The Way of the Dog may not be Savage's most charming book, but it is his most compelling."
On the Seawall "The Way of the Dog is poetic in nature, both for its lovely prose, but also for the stance: searching looks at the things closest to us."
January Magazine "The Way of the Dog is a story about a man finding peace without the restrictions of an identity defined by profession; without the ways that childhood traumas shape identity; without whatever he 'does' or 'did' or has not done as an artist, major or minor
all while the world grows younger around him."
BOMBlog "When you put down this book, you'll want to think about it... It will soon become apparent that you are now a part of Savage's world, which is the great triumph of any piece of literature."
NewPages "In this expressive and finely written novel, perhaps Sam Savage is indicating that a frail pact can be made by two adults to continue on living, and if it includes care and love, it will keep people alive, not in a blissful peace, but in a cessation, however short, from illness and painful memories."
The Winnipeg Review "In elegant, lively prose, [Savage] gives voice to the voiceless ... and the marginalized."
ForeWord "Savage's novels are tragicomic, funny, outrageous, unlikely, fantastic ... and eminently readable."—WOSU Columbus Public Radio Show Less