Eduardo Santiago
Many sweet moments, and many funny ones, but overall I found it annoying. The whole way through I kept wanting to DNF, but persevered because two people I love and trust urged me to... and, okay, they were right, it was worth finishing, but what an ordeal. I get that it's a farce, that the irritating characters are played for yuks, but they were too much: too obnoxious, too grating, and JayB (main human character) too much of a doormat. The character with by far the highest EQ and IQ was Clancy, the canine narrator.
Which brings me to my biggest disconnect. One problem with having read Nagel ("What Is It Like to Be a Bat?") is that books like these — written from the PoV of a dog — become exercises in nitpicking. A sentence such as "Alana turned her face away, hiding a smile": the emotional, social, situational, and cultural awareness it takes to observe and write that is beyond the ability of many humans; and we're supposed to believe this is a dog? I'm sorry, I can't buy that. I hate to make accusations without proof, but I'm like 90% sure that Mr. Cameron is not, in fact, a dog.
Many sweet moments, and many funny ones, but overall I found it annoying. The whole way through I kept wanting to DNF, but persevered because two people I love and trust urged me to... and, okay, they were right, it was worth finishing, but what an ordeal. I get that it's a farce, that the irritating characters are played for yuks, but they were too much: too obnoxious, too grating, and JayB (main human character) too much of a doormat. The character with by far the highest EQ and IQ was Clancy, the canine narrator.
Which brings me to my biggest disconnect. One problem with having read Nagel ("What Is It Like to Be a Bat?") is that books like these — written from the PoV of a dog — become exercises in nitpicking. A sentence such as "Alana turned her face away, hiding a smile": the emotional, social, situational, and cultural awareness it takes to observe and write that is beyond the ability of many humans; and we're supposed to believe this is a dog? I'm sorry, I can't buy that. I hate to make accusations without proof, but I'm like 90% sure that Mr. Cameron is not, in fact, a dog.