The Dog with the Flute in its Mouth by Emily Anna King 锡萍芳

The Dog with the Flute in its Mouth by Emily Anna King is an epic, heartfelt journey of discovering identity when it can never fully be known. Through masterful language that is both bold and deeply personal, each word King delicately places like the yearning footsteps of the imaginary determined to know the tangible, builds into an epic story ages old yet bursting with a vision that is inspired, fresh, and new.

In some ways, The Dog with the Flute in its Mouth is both fiction and poetry, autobiographical, yet not. Three characters, a woman, a boy, and a dog all capture and bear witness to a central theme of exploring the intangible. With the use of deep emotion, sometimes heavy and sometimes joyous, these characters pull us along in a poetic search to know the unknowable, and to feel that which can never be felt.

The Dog with the Flute in its Mouth spans continents and is both grounded and threaded together with the influences of cultures from east to west. Musical metaphors help the reader experience King’s search for a truth that is desperate to be felt, yet by its very nature will never be afforded an opportunity to truly be known. In doing so, we are unwittingly guided toward a beautiful and thoughtful study of humanity that gives us pause to think of our own stories and how they have influenced every aspect of our lives.

Describing the indescribably, giving shape and form to that which can never be constrained by such things, culminates in a passionate vision to be cradled in a love so profound that it becomes a reality as real and as true as anything in this life or any other.

Such is the experience of sitting with The Dog with the Flute in its Mouth, an enormous, cathartic and life affirming piece that touches the heart and the mind and questions the validity of building a reality of one’s own when the reality of others is forever shrouded in a quiet darkness determined to forever be obscured.

–Howard Odentz is the author of several young adult and emerging adult novels, novellas and short stories that explore the desperation, horror,  and sometimes humor, of those trapped in frightening situations while sitting on the cusp of an adulthood that is just out of reach.