It's the book narrated by the dog that everyone's been talking about!

At first, I was pretty sure the conceit of having a dog narrator was going to be the only thing this book had going for it, and I wasn't even sure that was going to be enough because the Enzo's voice and reasoning are a little too human to be fully believable. It doesn't feel like you're hearing a story from the dog's perspective; it just feels like it's from a person who can't talk and who people only sometimes take seriously. It's essentially a "literary fiction" type book told through a dog's eyes -- a following of a small group of characters through X amount of years, in this case, Enzo's lifetime. I think Enzo's "doggy reasoning" is supposed to come across as funny or clever, but at times it feels incredibly out-of-place, such as when he lists his top 5 favorite actors in the same breath that he reflects upon his master's wife dying.

And with that caveat, it probably isn't hard to guess that this book gets pretty darn depressing around the middle. It's one of those books where it seems like the main character just gets crapped on and crapped on again, until the world really does start to feel like a pretty terrible place. Although it can feel claustrophobic at times, I did appreciate the restraint necessary to write a book only in the scenes a dog could witness, and Garth does a good job of leaving the right amount of "holes" without things being too confusing. And the way things resolve at the end is satisfying, if maybe a bit too easy (I'd rather have that than more crappiness), and, I admit it, the epilogue did have me choking up. I could have done without the horny zebra stuffed animal and the evil, Lolita-esque 15-year-old cousin, though.