Book Review: Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet by Gary Kowalski

The death of a pet is always a painful experience for their owners. In this caring book, Gary Kowalski offers warmth, guidance and wisdom for anyone facing this loss. It is a compilation of heart-warming stories, verse and photographs to provide comfort.

I decided to purchase this book after losing Olive, and with the intention of seeking comfort. I want to clarify that, despite being the book written by a clergyman, it has less religious content than other books about the same subject. I just hate reading about pets going to heaven when I don’t believe in God or heaven myself. Why is that agnostics or atheists don’t have a right to be comforted? I guess it’s just easier to believe in something greater. This book has less of that compared to other, but the second half is more loaded with religious stuff, which I found less interesting than the first half.

There is a chapter about assisting children with the loss of a pet, and it’s something I missed from other books. I found the general tone of the book quite aseptic, which is not a bad thing but I missed somehow some empathy.

The book has some great pieces of advice on how to deal with the loss of a pet, and it doesn’t go much into religion, but more into philosophy. It’s not a perfect book by any means, but I found it more helpful than others. It also mentions some famous books and poems about the same subject, so it opens the possibility to exploring more about the subject.

Barry Abrams delivered a good and clear narration. I think his style went well with the book, and he even gave different voices to the texts by other authors included in the book. I think I would have preferred the book to be narrated with a bit more sentiment, but this was missing from the text too, so Abrams did a good job with the material he had.

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lomeraniel

My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.

I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.