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Book Reviewed by:
Callum McLaughlin
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A young interfaith chaplain is joined on her hospital rounds one night by an unusual companion: a rough-and-tumble dog who may or may not be a ghost.
As she tends to the souls of her patients—young and old, living last moments or navigating fundamentally altered lives—their stories provide unexpected healing for her own heartbreak. Balancing wonder and mystery with pragmatism and humor, Ellen Cooney (A Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances) returns to Coffee House Press with a generous, intelligent novel that grants the most challenging moments of the human experience a shimmer of light and magical possibility.
One
Once when I was small I asked my parents, What is a soul?
My father called it a mystery, like the genie in Aladdin's lamp. He knew I'd been reading stories of Arabian Nights. But what he said could not be true. A soul can't slip from a body and speak to you and grant wishes, if you rubbed yourself like rubbing a lamp. I had tried, many times.
My mother said that if she had to compare a soul to a character in a story, she'd pick Tinker Bell, the best thing about Peter Pan.
So I began to imagine a fairy inside me, curled up sleeping for most of the time, perhaps on a cushion of my guts, or some pillow of an organ.
"Wake up, Soul," I would say, but it didn't matter. I had to accept the fact that it could not be told what to do. I never had a clue when it would remind me it was there, whirring about like crazy, fluttering inside my rib cage, zipping around wherever it wanted to go, because of course it would do that; it had wings.
And it knew about the other thing. Like that was...
The repetition of meeting a character, learning their history, and saying goodbye to them as they pass on certainly captures how relentless and emotionally taxing the chaplain's work is, but it also means the novel can feel somewhat fragmented at times, reading more like a collection of interlinked short stories. At first, it can be frustrating to lose enigmatic characters just as we begin to feel invested in them; to so quickly have the focus shift on to someone else. But when you consider how closely this reflects the reality of the chaplain's situation, you realize what a clever structural device it is...continued
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(Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin).
Alyson Hagy, author of Scribe
[T]he very rare book that pierces both spirit and sense of humor. One Night Two Souls Went Walking wrapped me in its warm wisdom from the start. Reading it was like reading a Mary Oliver poem or Marilynne Robinson novel—radiant, humane, splendidly joyous. Dorthe Nors
A poetic story of wandering souls, filled with the beauty of human encounters and the sorrows of departure. Kate Bernheimer
Whenever I read Ellen Cooney, I feel like I am in the presence of a cunning medium—an unwavering mind reader of memories, dreams. One Night Two Souls Went Walking has the familiarity of old fairy-tale books, the steadiness of Tove Jansson, the abstraction of Silvina Ocampo, and something entirely new. A lovely and grave novel.
Throughout Ellen Cooney's One Night Two Souls Went Walking, there are several key scenes in which our narrator – a hospital chaplain – observes therapy dogs at work. The book comments on the grace and importance of the service these animals provide for patients, from aiding recovery to providing comfort in someone's final moments.
Like emotional support animals, therapy animals (most commonly dogs and cats) can have a hugely positive effect on a person's mental health, offering patients a sense of companionship during a time of fear and uncertainty. But while emotional support animals tend to be privately owned pets that work consistently with one individual, therapy animals work with trained handlers, allowing them to assist...
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