After seeing the movie with Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson, I decided that I wanted to read the book. I’m glad I did because there were a few scenes that weren’t in the movie and a whole part of the movie that was not in the book. Before I get to those comparisons, here is the basic story. John and Jenny at the beginning of the book (this is nonfiction by the way) are worried about having a baby because Jenny can’t even take care of a plant. One day while looking at the classified ads, John gets the idea of getting a dog. They go to the breeders, see the mother Labrador retriever and her little puppies and wonder where the father is. They pick up a puppy and as they are leaving the farm, this male Lab comes barreling out of the forest at top speed with tremendous energy. This foreshadows what the Grogans will have to deal with with Marley.

Marley is a handful from day one. He chews up the drywall, tears up the furniture, everything in their Florida home has to be dog proofed. There is a lot written about dog poop in this book because that is one of the big things they have to deal with, especially after Marley becomes enamored with eating mangoes. Speaking of eating, Marley eats at top speed and will eat anything that he can find whether it is edible or not. There is one point where he eats a gold necklace John was going to give Jenny for their anniversary.

John and Jenny are both journalists working for the local papers in Palm Beach, Florida. The movie dealt more with John’s working life and how he became a columnist and even introduced a close friend of John’s at the paper. These were only barely touched on in the book. We knew he was a columnist and we knew what paper he worked for and he talked about some of the stories he wrote as a columnist and how he would get those stories, but other than that, work life wasn’t discussed as much. Another aspect of this book is Jenny’s pregnancy and the complications she had with her first baby and how she was able to have two more. Marley’s reactions around Jenny when she was in distress were very interesting and it makes me think of another good Fiction book I’ve read called The Art of Racing in the Rain where the dog narrates the story, but has this sixth sense when the human the dog is close to is in real pain. It is very fascinating to me how the dog’s mind must work.

One more comparison that I wanted to make is a scene in the book that was completely left out of the movie. Marley was a movie star. . . briefly. A film crew came to Florida to make this movie called The Last Home Run that ended up being so bad it went straight to video. They wanted a dog so Marley was auditioned and got the part. This is a hilarious chapter in the book because of all the antics Marley gets into from stealing food from the buffet table to having them do take after take because Marley behaved so horribly. Here are a few scenes from that movie with the actual Marley:

Just like the movie, the book was funny and sweet and the ending was a real tearjerker. It was a very enjoyable book though and one any dog owner would probably like.