SOURCE: "Good Dog! Bad Dog!," in The New York Times Book Review, April 9, 1995, p. 11.

In the following excerpt, McCall offers a mixed assessment of A Dog's Life.

The One Hundred Cruelest Pet Stories probably won't be showing up at fine booksellers anytime soon. Writers who choose to treat with the world of cats and dogs must tread lightly; pet love tolerates if not lives off the occasional tear in the eye and lump in the throat, and the tender sensibilities at the heart of the man-animal bond must be respected. Indeed, they're usually pandered to. Even adult-level pet writing commonly wallows in a kind of Disney-ish pastel zone more bluntly described as icky. How to write pet stories, then, while skirting the swamps of smarm?

Peter Mayle's solution [in A Dog's Life] is ingenious. The author of A Year in Provence turns the tables and writes from his...