A DOG'S LIFE (1995)

With his fourth book, former London adman-turned-Francophile belletrist Mayle (A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence) seems to have tired of trumpeting the gastronomic feats and personal peccadilloes of his neighbors, and has written a ''memoir'' from the point of view of Boy, the family dog. This conceit allows for little more than the chewing over of various social and domestic habits of Boy's owners; paeans to local butchers and the bitch next door; and a few words of warning about cats. What's absent is precisely what made Mayle's earlier books so enjoyable -- a bemused Englishman abandoning himself to the sensual pleasures of France. Unfortunately, this time out, readers get Alpo, not foie gras.