jeezjane 's review for:

Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis

4.0

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Listened to it on audiobook, which was super enjoyable. I thought it was a super amazing book with an amazing premise, well-thought out and very "believable"! It was clear that the author thought very hard about how to build a language from pseudo-scratch, how canine nature would affect what kind of things they want to talk about. I was VERY interested in how a group of dogs wanted to devolve the language into what is only necessary for dogs. And it was even more interesting how they developed feelings of humiliation and distrust/betrayal when before language, they never experienced them as such. It was such a unique POV -- moreso because each dog had their own personality. I wish more time had been spent with dog to dog interactions, to be honest, over relationships between dogs and humans. Although reading about the development of Majnoun's relationship and Meera(sp?) was very fulfilling. In contrast, I felt like Prince's arc was a bit disappointing with respect to how much time was spent on his story. I loved the other dogs' reactions to Prince's poetry, and was less interested in how Prince survived his elderly years. It was a bit hard to read at times. In fact, there are some very brutal parts throughout the book. Although it is not a violent book, death happens, and the author doesn't mince words when describing dog behaviour like mounting. So it's definitely not a book for kids, although the story itself is not super "serious" or deep. Although maybe it was deep? At least, it could be deep in that you really think about how dogs think and how they view the world, but you don't need to, you can just enjoy the book as is. HOWEVER, after finishing the book, whenever seeing a dog on the street, I definitely had a mental pause and thought, "What's going through that dog's mind?"

The story starts off super strong, gets incredible interesting as the dogs develop, but in comparison, the ending fell kind of boring/flat. However, all loose strings were tied nicely, and so it was a fulfilling read from start to finish. Highly recommend.