Just Bill

by Barry Knister

College students who truly want to succeed after graduation must start preparing as soon as they begin their post-high school education. Majoring in the Rest of Your Life helps high school seniors... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0982158807
• ISBN13: 9780982158807
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Gold Mountain Press
• Length: 173 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Just Amazing

Barry Knister's Just Bill is gentle and wise without kitsch or sentimentality. The novel alternates between Fred "Vinyl's" Florida retirement community, the upscale Donegal Golf and Country Club, and his lakeside vacation cabin in Northern Michigan, where he finds, eighteen months before the novel begins, "Bill," an oversized stray mutt, half Labrador retriever, part German Shepherd, a quarter Great Dane, a "mistake" from a puppy mill. Much of the story is conveyed from the dog's point of view and Knister imparts with skillful artlessness the wordless conversations between dogs in the gated Florida community who congregate after dinner on the community's precisely manicured lawns. Knister plausibly portrays the intelligence of dogs, their sensitivity to human emotion, their anxieties and attachments, their interest in what is going on between their masters, their attunement to order, routine, and repeated words. Knister marks the peculiarities of particular breeds in his representations, "at birth Yorkshire Terriers are weighed on a gram scale," "Border Collies bark very little, using eye contact to intimidate whatever they herd," "dachshunds are courageous, fearless even, given their size. But they don't handle change well." The novel's tension revolves around the relationship between Fred, a retired vinyl siding salesman, referred to in the novel as "Vinyl," and his wife, who resents his attachment to the dog. When their grandchildren Ruby, a sullen ten year old, still angry over her parents' divorce and her father's remarriage, visits her grandparents in Florida with her younger brother Ron, new stepmother, and infant sibling, the "Missus" forces Vinyl to abandon Bill at a shelter when the baby's cradle is tipped over by Ruby, who blames the mishap on the dog. Bill's heroic efforts to reunite with his master is set against Florida's spectacular tropical storms and vivid sunsets, "weather so powerful," it seems to have a personality. An identity." observes a Donegal resident. Knister foregrounds the crises of other Donegal residents, an aging "Madame," and her preternaturally intelligent AKC Chocolate Brown miniature poodle "Emma" whose son and daughter-in-law force her into assisted-living, and the grief of Gilda Gilmore, a Land's End model, whose husband has died of a heart attack when the novel opens. When Hotspur, the Gilmore's dog, loses his owner, Hotspur dies in search of his Master. "He'd been struck by a car or pickup as he tried crossing, running for the beach where Cliff Gilmore was waiting with the Frisbee, in his shorts, standing in the lap of water, very tan and the hair on his arms bleached as white as the collie's chest." Knister brings to life the petty resentments and jealousies of the older women against the thin and attractive widow, Glenda Gilmore. And his portrait of Ruby, the sullen, angry granddaughter, absorbed in her Gameboy, is especially effective. In staging the comeback of Bill from near death, h

Just Bill! A good read.

"Just Bill" is a good read. The story is set in Naples, FL. Bill is a dog that tries to be a good dog. Much of the dialogue is written from Bill's view as well as his dog buddies. Barry Knister seems to have more emphathy than most of us with respect to how dogs think and act. At 170 pages it can easily be read a a few evenings. Any dog owner, anyone with aging parents with a dog, or anyone familiar with Naples, will enjoy and learn from this grabber of a story. Thank you Barry for your insights.

An Evening with Bill

Barry Knister's JUST BILL is a short novel (173 pages) that not only can you read in one sitting but one that you will want to finish sooner rather than later. Your heart, whether or not you are a dog person, will go out to Bill, who is described as of Labrador mix, named after the Depression-era song "Bill," a stray that Vinyl, his name for his owner Fred-- who got that name from Bill because he sold vinyl siding before he and Misses retired to Naples, Florida-- rescued. There is nothing, therefore, that Bill will not do for his master. He initially lives the life that every dog should live: he is loved by his master for whom he wants to be the best dog ever, he is well provided for, does not have to be walked ever on a leash, and has many other canine friends in the neighborhood: two dachschunds named Wolfi and Stanzi because their owner loves Mozart; a miniature poodle named Emma a la Jane Austin whose mistress is Madame, a lover also of MADAM BOVARY, a "refined, well-read woman among golfers;" and Hotspur, a border-collie who resides with the Gilmores. Glenda Gilmore provides much fodder for the gossip mill in this community of retirees because she is much younger and prettier than most of the other wives. Of course in every good novel-- and this one certainly qualifies-- the characters soon leave Eden; or as the writer Rick Bragg says so eloquently, someone steps in front of a train. What Mr. Knister has created here is a story that is universal on every level: how to ease a parent into assisted living, when you know that she will lose her best friend and companion, her dog, because of restrictions at the new home; the pain of taking a beloved animal back to a shelter after having had that animal for years; the difficulties that both stepchildren and stepparents face in trying to bond with each other; what to do when a child tells a lie and the consequences of that falsehood-- even though Wordsworth may have said that we came into the world trailing clouds of glory, every parent knows that children can be duplicitous at the drop of a stuffed animal-- and finally the buoyancy of a love that settles down in old age where maintaining peace is more important than winning an argument. Or as Simon and Garfunkel would sing, "Old Friends." The author describes this phenomenon in words as eloquently and profoundly as any writer I can remember reading: "the simple pragmatism that characterizes long marriages--that is, the mutual acceptancwe of deeply flawed human nature." His description of the other dogs that Bill finds himself in the company of in an animal shelter will break your heart: "Here, along with dogs whose owners have died or gone to nursing homes, or dogs who just wandered away and will likely be collected soon, are dogs either given up in the right way, or dumped on roads or at rest stops, at gas stations. Some were inconveniences, dogs that on second thought seemed a bad idea. Others threatened children and postal workers. Some dogs he

A compelling read

Knister's thoughtful and inspiring novel,JUST BILL, is different from other recent stories about dogs. For instance, Marley and Me is about a young couple starting life together, who happen to have a fun-loving, chaotic yellow lab. The Art of Racing in the Rain presents the reader with a literary, dog-as-philosopher who tells the story. Both books are quite well done, but the authors aren't much concerned with the actual lives of canines. JUST BILL captures the way things really are between dogs and owners. The story tells of a rescued Labrador retriever mix. He's "just Bill," one more mutt who was saved and is now devoted to his master. His family lives on a golf course in Naples, Florida, and on a lake in Michigan. The wife was angry the day her husband came home with a big stray. When her troubled granddaughter Ruby comes for a visit, the wife uses a lie told by the child to force her husband to give up his blameless dog. This plot twist is what sets Bill's journey in motion. He is saved a second time when his size convinces a young man that Bill will make a good guard dog. But when the anxious-to-please rescue dog makes friends with the thief who robs his new owner, Bill is again given up. Eventually, he escapes to play a crucial role in the life of a grieving young widow, as well as in the lives of Ruby and her grandparents. By story's end, the main characters have moved from betrayal and suffering to healing. The point throughout is how something so small as a throw-away dog can change lives and shape destiny. It reminds us we are all mutts, and that the choices we make are what determine our value and meaning in the world. JUST BILL presents in terms that are true to life, just how deep and meaningful can be the relationships between people and dogs. You don't have to be a dog lover to love this book. But it doesn't hurt.

A Book I Like

Just Bill is an appreciation of the dialog between humans and animals and of the ways they can rescue each other. At the start a woman laments to her dog, "It's not your fault, it's my fault." The woman is Glenda Gilmore, who behind her back is called "the Floozy" and "trophy wife" by many of her neighbors in the colony of houses around a Florida golf course with the faux Scottish name of Donegal. Younger and more attractive than her neighbors--hence the vicious nicknames some of them have given her--Glenda suddenly finds herself grieving for a husband who has died of a heart attack. She confesses her "fault" (that she was away shopping and so couldn't help her husband when he was stricken) to their border collie who, true to his breed, watches her with an intentness that Glenda confuses with sympathetic listening. So the novel immediately exposes the strange, frequently lovely, and often incomplete dialog between humans and their dogs. Knister's dogs converse among themselves, gossiping and trying to puzzle things out, just enough to keep the story moving. He has a very deft touch with the dogs' voices. They both speak their natures and reflect the language they hear from their masters and mistresses. One of the dogs, told by the others that she is a dog, denies it sharply: "No. I'm Babycakes, Snookums, Love muffin." Bill, of the book's title, soon gains our admiration. He's half-Labrador retriever, half-whatever, an absolute peach who's sometimes quite mistaken about what's going on and wonderfully baffled. To stretch Plato some, Bill is devoted to "the good." His pleasure in doing anything with his master, in doing the right things as their companionship has taught them to him, and in resisting his urges to "dig" in fresh green earth is touching. Largely because Bill's "good" is so intricately bound up with the wishes of his master and other humans, his life becomes deeply at risk in a terrific Florida storm. Knister's handling of human characters is no less deft than his touch with the dogs. The dogs' characters emerge quickly. The humans' characters come to light slowly, whether they struggle to do the right thing or disregard it. Four human lives change crucially during the story. "Madame," a perceptive older woman who is losing her memory, falls victim to a daughter-in-law who lusts after her hardwood floors. Vinyl (so named because vinyl siding was his field before he retired) is Bill's master--who fails Bill and regrets it. Glenda is the younger woman at Donegal, a figure of grace, who protects Bill. Ruby is a nine-year old who cannot put down her electronic games, is furious at her new stepmother, and tells the dangerous lie that kicks off Bill's odyssey. Knister has a sharp eye for details, and tells his story sparely yet movingly. As he remarks in the book: "Who can say which moments of smallest consequence nevertheless shape and direct the future?"