SC Book Club April 3, 2023, at 2-4pm – Fellows & External Fellows Only – Zoom Only

April 3, 2023, 2-4pm – Fellows and External Fellows

Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog (1967) (afterword by Annie Proulx)

Discussion Leaders:  Mary Jane Ashley, Linda Hutcheon                                               

When is a western not a western? When it’s an intense psychological portrait of a dysfunctional family? Phil and George are brothers, joint owners of the biggest ranch in their Montana valley. Phil is the bright one, George the plodder. Phil is tall and angular; George is stocky and silent. Phil is a brilliant chess player, a voracious reader, an eloquent storyteller; George learns slowly, and devotes himself to the business. And then again…Phil is also a vicious sadist, with a seething contempt for weakness to match his thirst for dominance; George has a gentle, loving soul. They sleep in the room they shared as boys, and so it has been for forty years. When George unexpectedly marries a young widow and brings her to live at the ranch, Phil begins a relentless campaign to destroy his brother’s new wife. But he reckons without her unlikely protector. A most intriguingly written and cleverly plotted narrative, it caught the eye of Oscar-winning New Zealand director Jane Campion, whose Netflix film adaptation of the novel will also be discussed.

(available in print, audiobook, e-book 304 pp)