Where You Are

After the death of his elderly aunt, Lake Stevenson finds his life rearranged when she wills him her elegant Philadelphia home and her unwanted springer spaniel and he meets a pretty real estate agent.

The true guides in life, indicates Constable (Why Shy Men Dream) in this wry novel, are those who show us where we are inside. The trick is learning that they may show up at unexpected times, in unexpected guises. Lake Stevenson, a 30-something bachelor with a tidy condo in Philadelphia and a smugly tidy life, learns where he is inside from a springer spaniel. Lake has lived and loved with cool detachment, boasting that his work-writing instruction manuals-reflects his highly organized "inner nature." Now his rich Aunt Ilsa has died, leaving him her house in Philadelphia's blue-blood Chestnut Hill, with the inheritance contingent upon his maintaining the beautiful stone house in the style to which his aunt's dog, Randall, has become accustomed. Although Lake vows to get around the will, readers will bet on the deadpan hound. Randall unflappably endures a bungled hair-coloring, imprisonment in an attic and a botched dognapping. When Lake abandons Randall in a park, he guiltily comes back to collect him-the dog at last has blown a hole through his new master's icy exterior. Finally, when Lake tries to sell the house out from under Randall, he falls helplessly in love with the real estate agent. While walking through a snow storm, bewildered by everything that is happening, he at last realizes how cold he has been: "If snowflakes landed on him, they would not melt." Although Constable's humans can be mawkish, Randall charms. He comes across as a laconic canine Zen master, opening his human master up to the innate wisdom of life by making it impossible for him to stay closed.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

After a very long silence (his last novel, What Shy Men Dream, was published in 1969), Constable delivers a light, quirky love story featuring a myopic Philadelphia publisher and a dog who changes his life. For some years, Lake Stevenson has made good progress with his small, self-owned company (InstruX Associates, a producer of instructional manuals for other businesses' products), but the youngish, single entrepreneur clearly could use an instructional manual himself when it comes to his maddeningly meandering personal life. Issues of commitment and destiny come to a head when Lake's elderly Aunt Ilsa dies, leaving Lake her mansion in Chestnut Hill on the sole condition that he also adopt Randall, her dog, and share her house with the animal for the rest of its life. Heartless Lake hardly gives Ilsa's wishes a second thought before he begins planning how to ``lose'' the dog, sell the house, and invest the proceeds in his company. His insensitivity, along with an inability to see himself actually living in such a grand home, finally prompts Lake's girlfriend to give up on him and leave. Her departure only spurs Lake on toward his poorly examined goal. Nevertheless, it turns out that even this man can live and learn, at least when sufficient motivation presents itself: Randall grows on him, and, more importantly, the pretty real-estate agent Lake engages to sell the house so charms its owner that he alters his plans completely to win her approval. In the end, the house, the girl, and the dog all go to our hero--a man more lucky than wise. Winsome and sweet, with a sly humor that lingers deliciously in the memory. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Constable has given us a wonderful romantic comedy in this great book to curl up with on a winter's evening. Thirtysomething Lake Stevenson is cruising through life. He has a comfortable apartment, a comfortable girlfriend, and is comfortably self-employed writing appliance instructions. But his life is thrown a curve when his aunt dies, leaving him her elegant estate in a prime Philadelphia neighborhood. His sister gets the summer house in Maine. The catch is the aunt's beloved dog, Randall, who must continue to live in the style to which he is accustomed, ten months in Philadelphia, with summers in Maine. Lake plans to lose the dog and sell the house to deal with his grief. But somehow, the dog, the house, and the real estate agent all worm their ways into Lake's heart. It's laugh-out-loud funny, with wonderful dialog that is often revealed as life's own instruction book might advise. Highly recommended for popular reading collections.?Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati Technical Coll., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In an old moneyed section of Philadelphia stands a house in which lives Randall the dog. Lake Stevenson inherits the house on his late aunt's condition that he maintain the pet there until its natural death. No dog lover, Lake schemes to rid himself of Randall and then sell the house, which efforts form the backbone of what develops into a romantic comedy. Obstacles to his plans arise: the housekeeper is a snoop, the neighbor is the executor of the will, and Lake's girlfriend in a fading relationship longs to move into the place. In farcical vignettes he sheds himself of those impedimenta, but never of the dog, responsibility for whose fate Lake tries to evade by such futile tricks as "losing" it: Randall is just too dumb to run away. So while that problem hangs fire, Lake contacts real estate agent Jennifer Dee, and the two begin an amorous pas de deux in light dialogue that makes this a fast read. For thirtyish singles looking for no-message amusement. Gilbert Taylor