Enzo the dog?

I love dogs. When I was little my favorite books were all about dogs. So I was very excited to read a book narrated by a dog. Well, I’ve been disappointed.

It’s not that the narration is completely off, but there is something we expect from a talking, or at least a thinking dog. Well what we expect is this:

 

But even if Garth Stein wanted to go for something more subtle than that he had to at least capture that doggy nature. Enzo is sweet, sometimes, but is just a bit too much like a man. I suppose that may be the point, that is Enzo’s goal after all. But then, why advertise your book as being narrated by a dog. It’s narrated by a human soul trapped in a dog body.

Because of how I feel about this I think the best parts of the book are when Enzo does act like a dog and doesn’t understand how the world works. For instance, the demon zebra. Enzo hallucinates this crazy zebra massacre and continues to be haunted by the evil zebra stuffed animal.  At first, it weirded me out but it’s strangely growing on me.

 

Anyway, this is going to sound mean, but I don’t really understand the appeal of this book. I understand people wanting to read a book narrated by a dog (so did I) but  I don’t understand why they would recommend this  book, which to me is NOT really narrated by a dog. It’s narrated by a prophetically wise soul that just happens to follow this guy named Denny around.