Pick of the Litter

Several months after Helen Humphreys’s calm and dignified vizsla Charlotte passed away, she met someone at a park who had known her old dog. The person commented that it must be hard to move on to another puppy after losing such a faithful companion. “I thought what a strange comment that was, really,” Humphreys writes in her latest memoir. “If you have loved someone or something, why wouldn’t you want to love again?”

And a Dog Called Fig is a meditation on the writer’s life and the trusting familiars that have provided support along the way. As Humphreys reflects on the nature of solitude — that fine line between an author’s guarded isolation and loneliness — she considers how she has become attached to one specific breed: the exuberant and immensely loyal vizsla. First she had Hazel, who was “game for anything.” Then came the beloved Charlotte, whom Humphreys describes as...