What has the author done to engage you, the reader, in a relationship with the book’s content?

Christopher Buckley tries to make the reader feel towards Mum and Pup something close to what he himself feels towards them. He doesn’t try too hard, though; he recognizes that they are his parents, not ours, and therefore we don’t feel the same filial love for them that he does. We can, however, recognize his love for them and relate it to our love for our parents. Those of us that have parents can relate to Christopher’s relationship with his, and those of us that do not can probably relate to his story about losing them. Of course, there are exceptions, and perhaps those who cannot relate to anything about the deaths of Christopher Buckley’s parents can gain something like a window into the life of someone whom they cannot understand.

The author uses little anecdotes about and quotes from each of his parents in order to give the reader some insight into what his life with them was like. Some of them let us know that his parents were in fact “larger-than-life people” as he informs us on page 2. Some make us question their sanity, like the story about his father going for an overnight sail in a nor’easter. His only comment was that it would be a “brisk sail.” And others let us know that these “larger-than-life people” were still people, very much so, who went sailing and cooked dinners and had a son and grandchildren, and, ultimately, died.