Mary Miller reminds me of Jill McCorkle, which is about the highest praise I can give.  Their styles of humor are very, very close.  She also has a little bit of George Singleton about her.  Mix this with some Eleanor Oliphant and I think you’ve got the idea.

 

The theme is human connection, but in an unsentimental rather than a sappy way.  It’s being promoted as a book about a curmudgeonly older man who adopts a dog, but that implies (at least to me) that it’s going to be sickeningly sweet.  Instead, Louis drinks too much, makes bad decisions, and has an unrelentingly snarky internal monologue that I found hilarious.