In an age of increasing robot technology, animal rights, and a lack of a villain to define ourselves against, the question many people are grappling with is ‘what does it mean to be human, to be good’? Are we human because of our intelligence when computers can beat us at chess, make art, write poetry? Are we human because we are better than animals? I love this book because it’s a well done allegory of what it means to be human in a time where there are very few clear cut boundaries. Anything with Apollo and Hermes is not the real world in my opinion. You could classify it under magical realism if you wanted a literary genre to slot it into. So this review will be covering both formats.Īlthough Fifteen Dogs has received critical mainstream acclaim in CanLit circles, this book is firmly speculative fiction to me. I’ve read Fifteen Dogs two times in the last year, the first as an ebook and the second time as an audiobook.
Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.
The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old ‘dog’ ways, and those who embrace the change. A bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic.
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