I appreciate your response!

First, I both listened to it with TTs (text-to-speech) and sight-read it, which is often the case. I don’t think that particularly impacts it (although it is more of a challenge for me to like something which is an audiobook, if I haven’t read it before…TTS doesn’t have that negative impact for me).

I think part of how you see the use of Enzo’s humanness is whether you would agree that a dog becoming a human in a next life is a step up or not. I do tend to think dogs are more intelligent than most people think they are, but that’s not because I think they are more human…it’s more because I tend to equate dogs with humans in terms of…I’ll say the legitimacy of how they live life. Enzo often laments his lack of thumbs and speech, and that causes real problems. While he uses his dogness, it’s with a human level of manipulation…like it was a body switch movie. The rabbits in Watership Down don’t think like humans, and aren’t pretending to be rabbits (as I might argue that there are times Enzo is pretending to be a dog).

As to being heroic characters: I tend to think a character is heroic when they take positive actions that change things, not just when they endure (or resist doing something evil). I have that problem with Lord of the Rings…we are to cheer when a character resists failing, rather than when they take a risk and succeed.

That’s probably just me, though.

Excellent review. I recently “read” this one myself (through Audible) and was quite surprised at how emotionally powerful it ended up being. I would have written a review on my blog, but there are quite a few things about the book that are opposed to my personal religious beliefs (reincarnation and the Buddhist mindset that is part of the primary conceit you mentioned) and while that didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the book, it would be hard to explain away.

That said, I didn’t get quite the same degree of the negativity you did from the book. Letting the dog have human-level intelligence was easy (we have a chocolate lab named Eli who I “speak” for in my house). Using endless hours of TV as his educational device was kind of funny. And Enzo, despite his “predicament” was always so inescapably optimistic. Choosing to see the good wherever it could possibly be present. Seeing his “dog-ness” not as some sort of tragedy so much as nearly being at the pinnacle of the reincarnation-evolutionary ladder. Like he was almost there, and knew he would be human in his next life.

Both Enzo and Denny maintained something of noble character, too. Choosing to fight against all those odds and to do it in a way that was just plain positive. I loved that aspect of the book. Honestly, it was refreshingly different from the common dysfunctional negativity dystopia that seems to be the standard (or at least highly admired) in today’s literature. Noble character is almost vilified by our media. As though it is a ridiculous or conceited thing to which to even strive.

I thought the book had essentially a positive narrative. Yes, there were times when things seemed bleak. Denny certainly has his fallen-hero moment. But he doesn’t go all the way (so to speak) in that. Enzo’s positive perspective on the nobility in Denny pulled me through that with no problems.

So, I’m wondering did the fact that I listened to an unabridged, produced audiobook lead me to my somewhat more positive impression of the book? And increase my enjoyment therefore? Did you read the book or listen with tts? Did the intonation used by the narrator lend much to the impression for me or similarly the lack thereof in the tts engine for you?

Or maybe it’s something like Meet the Parents. I hated that movie. It was just disaster after disaster. The little bit of positivity at the end did not, for me, feel genuine or make it seem “worth it.” But everyone else I know loves that movie. Maybe I’m just on the opposite side here

-Jason