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The Dog in the Chapel #3
Dog Roses
They lived happily ever after - the last line of every fairytale, every romance. But how happily can you live? How long can ‘ever after’ last? This third and final book in the Dog in the Chapel series finds Tom and Christopher still together during the middle section of their lives: a very ordinary couple living in France. But there are challenges aplenty to face: disaster aboard a big ship; the tiniest of enemies, the aids virus. The struggle to make a living renovating Dordogne cottages; the task of making relationships work. Their life could be your life, actually. Could be anybody’s - gay or straight.
354 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 15, 2016
27 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
About the author
Anthony McDonald
68 books107 followersAnthony McDonald studied history at Durham University. He worked very briefly as a musical instrument maker and as a farm labourer before moving into the theatre, where he has worked in almost every capacity except those of Director and Electrician.
His first novel, Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet, was published in 2001 and his second, Adam, in 2003.
Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet became the first book in a Seville trilogy that also comprises Along The Stars and Woodcock Flight.
Other books include the sequel to Adam, - Blue Sky Adam - and the stand-alone adventure story, Getting Orlando.
Ivor's Ghosts, a psychological thriller, was published in April 2014.
The Dog In The Chapel, and Ralph: Diary of a Gay Teen, both appeared in 2014. Anthony is the also the author of the Gay Romance series, which comprises ten short novels.
Anthony McDonald's short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic
He has also written the scripts for several Words and Music events, based around the lives and works of composers including Schubert and Brahms, which have been performed in Britain and in Portugal.
His travel writing has appeared in the Independent newspaper.
After several years of living and teaching English in France McDonald is now based based in rural East Sussex.
His first novel, Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet, was published in 2001 and his second, Adam, in 2003.
Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet became the first book in a Seville trilogy that also comprises Along The Stars and Woodcock Flight.
Other books include the sequel to Adam, - Blue Sky Adam - and the stand-alone adventure story, Getting Orlando.
Ivor's Ghosts, a psychological thriller, was published in April 2014.
The Dog In The Chapel, and Ralph: Diary of a Gay Teen, both appeared in 2014. Anthony is the also the author of the Gay Romance series, which comprises ten short novels.
Anthony McDonald's short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic
He has also written the scripts for several Words and Music events, based around the lives and works of composers including Schubert and Brahms, which have been performed in Britain and in Portugal.
His travel writing has appeared in the Independent newspaper.
After several years of living and teaching English in France McDonald is now based based in rural East Sussex.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 31, 2016
This is the last volume of three in the series and I have enjoyed all three very much. An achievement to trace the lives of these two men from teenage years until old age, together with the friends and acquaintances they make along the way. Dealing sensitively and accurately with the mindset and attitudes each hold over a period of some 50 years McDonald has produced and enveloping, entrancing story, often very beautifully written. By the time i got to this volume I felt the characters had become old friends. A really good read, I recommend starting at the beginning as I did, the story is so much more fulfilling in its entirety.
July 20, 2022
4.5 - Stars
While a fairy tale ending was what I’d expected, it certainly wasn’t what Anthony McDonald delivered in Dog Roses, the final volume of his excellent ‘The Dog in the Chapel’ trilogy.
Summing up the thesis of the trilogy, Christopher McGing says it best: “When everything else has gone, the only thing that matters is love.”
Dog Roses begins in 1987, nine years after Tom & Christopher And Their Kind ended. And, as happens in all our lives, each of McDonald’s characters has aged. Tom Sanders is now 47-years old and Christoper is forty-four.
Witten in four parts, Dog Roses covers a span of 17 years, taking both Tom and Christopher into their 60s.
After a harrowing experience on the English Channel during the great storm of 1987, a violent cyclone that occurred during the night of October 15–16, Dog Roses vacillates between being an extended travel guide and an exploration of life changing events, the life-goes-on things that all survivors are left to discuss.
Along the way Tom and Christopher become realtors, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, providing, at least, a fairy-tale setting to a sometimes unsettling narrative.
It's here that Tom’s mother, May, settles in Castillon-la-Bataille,
while only 8 miles away in St-Philippe
Tom and Christopher establish their new home in a long abandoned vineyard building that they renovate with Jean-Pierre and his apprentice, Antoine, as their French contractors.
Once again, Christoper introduces what is yet to come when he notes, ”Life has a habit of throwing you into situations so crazy that no audience would believe them in a film or a play.”
Tom and Christopher’s former student at the Star of the Sea Roman Catholic preparatory school in Kent, Angelo Dexter, continues to play a major role in their lives, as does Simon Rickman, another student expelled along with Angelo after they were caught together in a compromising sexual act. A third former student, John Moyse, now a writer at the BBC, is also prominently featured.
Throughout the novel, the naked and youthful portraits of Tom and Christopher that Gérard and Michel had painted, as well as the first portrait of them posing as David and Jonathan painted by Molly O’Deere, both pleasure and haunt them.
There are several things about this volume that make it less pleasing than the first two in the series. There is to much repetition; there are far too many places in single chapters where one paragraph ends and the next begins in a completely different time and place without warning of the transition; and most frustrating is the author’s failure to capitalize the acronym, AIDS, a surprising and jarring effect every time one reads ‘aids’.
Still, there is no question that even with a great deal of partner exchanging and tens of different characters to follow in both England and France, Dog Roses does provide a realistic conclusion to the lives that Tom and Christopher - and all their friends and families - have lived.
Please, if you’re reading this volume - preferably sequentially - in any public setting, be sure to have a box of Kleenex on hand. You’ll definitely need it.
While a fairy tale ending was what I’d expected, it certainly wasn’t what Anthony McDonald delivered in Dog Roses, the final volume of his excellent ‘The Dog in the Chapel’ trilogy.
Summing up the thesis of the trilogy, Christopher McGing says it best: “When everything else has gone, the only thing that matters is love.”
Dog Roses begins in 1987, nine years after Tom & Christopher And Their Kind ended. And, as happens in all our lives, each of McDonald’s characters has aged. Tom Sanders is now 47-years old and Christoper is forty-four.
Witten in four parts, Dog Roses covers a span of 17 years, taking both Tom and Christopher into their 60s.
After a harrowing experience on the English Channel during the great storm of 1987, a violent cyclone that occurred during the night of October 15–16, Dog Roses vacillates between being an extended travel guide and an exploration of life changing events, the life-goes-on things that all survivors are left to discuss.
Along the way Tom and Christopher become realtors, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, providing, at least, a fairy-tale setting to a sometimes unsettling narrative.
It's here that Tom’s mother, May, settles in Castillon-la-Bataille,while only 8 miles away in St-PhilippeTom and Christopher establish their new home in a long abandoned vineyard building that they renovate with Jean-Pierre and his apprentice, Antoine, as their French contractors. Once again, Christoper introduces what is yet to come when he notes, ”Life has a habit of throwing you into situations so crazy that no audience would believe them in a film or a play.”
Tom and Christopher’s former student at the Star of the Sea Roman Catholic preparatory school in Kent, Angelo Dexter, continues to play a major role in their lives, as does Simon Rickman, another student expelled along with Angelo after they were caught together in a compromising sexual act. A third former student, John Moyse, now a writer at the BBC, is also prominently featured.
Throughout the novel, the naked and youthful portraits of Tom and Christopher that Gérard and Michel had painted, as well as the first portrait of them posing as David and Jonathan painted by Molly O’Deere, both pleasure and haunt them.
There are several things about this volume that make it less pleasing than the first two in the series. There is to much repetition; there are far too many places in single chapters where one paragraph ends and the next begins in a completely different time and place without warning of the transition; and most frustrating is the author’s failure to capitalize the acronym, AIDS, a surprising and jarring effect every time one reads ‘aids’.
Still, there is no question that even with a great deal of partner exchanging and tens of different characters to follow in both England and France, Dog Roses does provide a realistic conclusion to the lives that Tom and Christopher - and all their friends and families - have lived.
Please, if you’re reading this volume - preferably sequentially - in any public setting, be sure to have a box of Kleenex on hand. You’ll definitely need it.
April 14, 2021
ET.AL.
So, this reflection is more the trilogy of "The Dog In The Chapel" than it is "Dog Roses." First and foremost, I'm a fan of Anthony McDonald. Having read his "Adam Trilogy" first and then this one, which preceded "Adam," I'm in love with his writing for a variety of reasons.
#1 He's not a drama queen. If you want action adventure it's not likely you'd much enjoy McDonald's books. The events he creates between our two protagonists (Tom & Christopher), and their mostly gay friends are often mundane or simply indictive of life's everyday challenges faced by most of us, gay and straight alike. Although since the books largely encompasses the last four decades of the twentieth century, McDonald doesn't ignore homophobia and the condemnation of the Catholic Church.
#2 This is NOT an M/M romance. Mostly, not entirely, he leaves the sex to our imaginations. He let's us know an intimate moment is about or has occurred and stops there.
#3 He beautifully blends his observations of nature and scenery of England and especially France with the everyday lives of his gay characters. Gay or straight, human sexuality is a part of mother earth and McDonald makes a point of driving all of that home.
To read "Dog Roses" without reading the two prequels is to miss the point. This trilogy is the arc of two gay men, in and out of love, but always loving that begins in 1962 lasting well into the twenty-first century. McDonald brilliantly intertwines the lives of Chris and Tom with their friends and families for more than five decades across three novels! Has this ever been done before in gay literature?
My criticisms are documented in my reflections from the first two books. Foremost, the sexual stamina of the characters is something I've never experienced. Either life has cheated me or McDonald has grossly exaggerated their superhuman libidos as literary license. I'm jealous.
As I've previously stated in my reviews of the two preceding novels, the major theme McDonald seems to want to discuss is monogamy between gay men. I'll say he come downs with "no, it isn't a realistic expectation." However, he doesn't think that sex "by happenstance" with friends, former boyfriends, or even a casual pick-up at all diminishes the love between men who have found their "soul mate."
OK, I hate to use a reference from a Disney movie, but this trilogy is the "circle of life." Reading the first two novels, this third and final tome has some pain involved not inconsistent with "end of life" that happens in all families. As painful as that was to read, it's to McDonald's credit that I was so emotionally engaged. I recommend that you should not read this last novel with out reading the prequels first. You'd be cheating yourself of a bittersweet romance. Gay, yes, but true of the love that exists between all humans.
So, this reflection is more the trilogy of "The Dog In The Chapel" than it is "Dog Roses." First and foremost, I'm a fan of Anthony McDonald. Having read his "Adam Trilogy" first and then this one, which preceded "Adam," I'm in love with his writing for a variety of reasons.
#1 He's not a drama queen. If you want action adventure it's not likely you'd much enjoy McDonald's books. The events he creates between our two protagonists (Tom & Christopher), and their mostly gay friends are often mundane or simply indictive of life's everyday challenges faced by most of us, gay and straight alike. Although since the books largely encompasses the last four decades of the twentieth century, McDonald doesn't ignore homophobia and the condemnation of the Catholic Church.
#2 This is NOT an M/M romance. Mostly, not entirely, he leaves the sex to our imaginations. He let's us know an intimate moment is about or has occurred and stops there.
#3 He beautifully blends his observations of nature and scenery of England and especially France with the everyday lives of his gay characters. Gay or straight, human sexuality is a part of mother earth and McDonald makes a point of driving all of that home.
To read "Dog Roses" without reading the two prequels is to miss the point. This trilogy is the arc of two gay men, in and out of love, but always loving that begins in 1962 lasting well into the twenty-first century. McDonald brilliantly intertwines the lives of Chris and Tom with their friends and families for more than five decades across three novels! Has this ever been done before in gay literature?
My criticisms are documented in my reflections from the first two books. Foremost, the sexual stamina of the characters is something I've never experienced. Either life has cheated me or McDonald has grossly exaggerated their superhuman libidos as literary license. I'm jealous.
As I've previously stated in my reviews of the two preceding novels, the major theme McDonald seems to want to discuss is monogamy between gay men. I'll say he come downs with "no, it isn't a realistic expectation." However, he doesn't think that sex "by happenstance" with friends, former boyfriends, or even a casual pick-up at all diminishes the love between men who have found their "soul mate."
OK, I hate to use a reference from a Disney movie, but this trilogy is the "circle of life." Reading the first two novels, this third and final tome has some pain involved not inconsistent with "end of life" that happens in all families. As painful as that was to read, it's to McDonald's credit that I was so emotionally engaged. I recommend that you should not read this last novel with out reading the prequels first. You'd be cheating yourself of a bittersweet romance. Gay, yes, but true of the love that exists between all humans.
December 16, 2018
The story did not move quickly, but it was a good finale to the trilogy.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews