“Much of this book felt as if it needed a better editing. I was left feeling as if the author rushed the story at the end leaving too many loose threads. At about the halfway point I was putting it aside,not sure I was willing to invest the time to finish it. The ending was tragic but my issue with it had more to do with the mad dash to end the story after such a rambling middle.”
“I love the entire story, untill the end, yes it was unexpected, but it made me think - don't we love to be surprised by the "expected"?”
“I thought the significance of the photograph was that Edgar realized the story Claude had told him about Gar having Forte and teaching him to jump into his arms on command and shooting him for his cowardice was actually a true story about Claude not Gar, that Claude had lied to him and that Edgar saw through him.”
“Did anyone understand the significance of the picture of Claude and Forte that Edgar was carrrying around and why was he carrying it?”
“I really went back and forth on this book. I read it because my book club was discussing it. I only got halfway through before the meeting and thought it was too long. However, I continued with the book and really started to warm up to it during the sequence when he ran away. I am not even a dog lover, and I thought the author's portrayal of the dogs was really lovely. I even liked all of the detail about the training, and the author's writing style. Yes, there were many questions in my mind as I read it, but that was what made the book compelling.”
“has anyone ever read "the dogs of babel"? i noticed some very striking similarities between the two books...”
“perhaps all stories do not have a happy ending, but the ending has to have some merit. i would like to say that i might have liked it better if there were more connections made to the beginning of the book. as for edgar's travels, they were the best part because they were engaging. the survival bits were good, but everything else about his relationship with claude was rediculously unnessicary. also, i'm surprised noone has said anything about this, but the book flap gives away more than the first two hundred pages! shouldn't that be a clue as to how much this story drags?”
“I have to agree with Joy S that too many things went unexplained. The book could easily have bee 200 pages shorter, there was was too much about dog breeding and training. However, unlike most people, I didn't feel that the ending was a disappointment. It was unexpected and terribly sad but not all stories have a happy ending. ”
“Tragedy, by my definition, results from some inherent flaw in the character. The only flaw of Edgar was that he is 12 years old. It doesn't seem like enough to hang a story on.”
