There was a long and very nice review of A Farewell to Arfs yesterday by John Wilson, senior editor of the Marginalia Review of Books, published in yesterday’s Washington Examiner. The review, titled A Farewell to Arfs and the Underrating of Collection Fiction, is behind a paywall, but here’s an excerpt:

Their latest adventure, recounted in A Farewell to Arfs, is their 15th, but it betrays no sense, such as I have sometimes experienced when reading a book in a long-running series, that the author is making a mighty effort to maintain his own interest in the story. On the contrary: The contagious zest that animated the very first book in the series, immediately drawing me in, continues unabated here. Part of the appeal, from the outset, is the way these books do several things at once. The premise of a story narrated by a dog is funny, though some people find it annoyingly “cute” and simply can’t get into the books. That’s fine! Let a thousand flowers bloom. Some fellow fiction readers to whom I’ve praised the series have asked me, eyebrows raised, “A talking dog?” No, I have duly explained. Chet is emphatically not a talking dog. He is rather a narrating dog, something entirely different.