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The Plague Dogs

Richard Adams

3.86 · Rating details · 7,126 ratings · 571 reviews

Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, creates a lyrical and engrossing tale, a remarkable journey into the hearts and minds of two canine heroes, Snitter and Rowf.

After being horribly mistreated at a government animal research facility, Snitter and Rowf escape into the isolation, and terror, of the wilderness. Aided only by a fox they call ''the Tod,'' the two dogs ...more

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Kindle Edition, 390 pages

Published November 3rd 2010 by Ballentine Books (first published September 22nd 1977)

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Nov 07, 2011 Libbie Hawker (L.M. Ironside) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, animal-fiction

I hated this book. I will never read it again, ever, as long as I live. And it absolutely deserves five stars.

The Plague Dogs is one of the most visceral, wrenching, emotional reads you'll ever find. It follows the fortunes of two dogs, Snitter and Rowf, who escape from a medical testing lab. In an attempt to cover up the unnecessary nature of the research done there, the humans running the lab start a media scare about the dogs, claiming that they carry a serious virus which may kill humans. In ...more

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Feb 11, 2021 Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile rated it it was ok · review of another edition

DNFing at 38 pages in. I left 2 instead of 1 star, because it’s not bad writing, but I quickly realized this wasn’t going to be a book for me. Not sure why I ever added it in the first place, to be honest. The animal abuse and despair is too much and I’m just getting started, so yeah I’m gonna save myself a LOT of heartache and move on to another book!

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Jan 31, 2008 Chris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, top-shelf

I really enjoy Richard Adams. Part of it is his writing - he has an excellent style and a definite gift for description. When he talks about a place, it is immediately obvious that he's actually been there. He uses multiple senses to tell you what a place looks, sounds and smells like, the feeling of the damp earth and the rolling mists, the tastes that seep through the air.... Not surprising when one is writing a book where a pair of dogs are the primary characters.

And that's another reason I l ...more

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Jan 16, 2011 Bookeater rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I have to disagree with the reviewer who says this is not realistic. I worked in a government lab in California only 2 years ago. Things have *not* changed. There are simply more organizations and welfare groups that have no actual say in day to day operations of labs. It's up to researchers and workers to follow the rules daily, and they always know when the inspections will happen.

Also, animal labs do use and buy animals from shelters for experiments. Back in 2006 for sure, Ingham County Anima ...more

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Nov 28, 2017 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

"What's a harangue?"
"Well, a harangue," said Mr. Powell, "it's sort of – well, if I make a very intense, excited sort of speech, about animals or something – "

Well, I've been harangued thoroughly by mr. Adams on the subject of scientific experiments on animals. [not a spoiler] Adams is clearly against it, in all circumstances.
An author is of course entitled to be passionate about his subject, it's even a desirable trait, and I am a big fan of several of his other novels. But with "The Plague D ...more

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Jul 22, 2008 Nicole rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

Emotionally over wrought and not very well anchored in the reality of research. This type of book has lead to people believing all labs just use any animal of any type for prurient vivisection. I work in labs and there are no animals not bred for lab use by specialists. To compare results the animals must be very limited in their genetic diversity they are not common pet store animals. Of course most were mice but there were rats and rabbits in some labs. My own work with mice was to create knoc ...more

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Oct 27, 2016 Elizabeth☮ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: recent-reads, never-forget

I rarely re-visit books that I start and don't complete in one try. I am so glad that I received this in a book exchange and returned to the adventures of Snitter and Rowf.

These two dogs find themselves in a facility that performs various experiments on all manner of animals. I won't go into details here, but if you are sensitive to this issue, I would recommend skimming certain portions of the book.

Snitter had an owner in his life before the facility and longs to return to this loving environm ...more

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Feb 08, 2015 Bam cooks the books ;-) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adventure, book-club-2015-challenge-group, 2015-reads

2015 Reading Challenge--week 7: Nonhuman characters.

Well, that was quite an adventure! Not as well done as Adams' more popular classic, Watership Down, perhaps but still well worth reading.

Two badly-treated dogs, Rowlf and Snitter, escape from Animal Research, Scientific and Experimental lab (A.R.S.E.--gotta love it!), in the beautiful English Lake District. The dogs have no idea how to survive in the wild but fortunately make friends with a wise fox (tod) who gives them advice and warnings. T 2015 Reading Challenge--week 7: Nonhuman characters.

Well, that was quite an adventure! Not as well done as Adams' more popular classic, Watership Down, perhaps but still well worth reading.

Two badly-treated dogs, Rowlf and Snitter, escape from Animal Research, Scientific and Experimental lab (A.R.S.E.--gotta love it!), in the beautiful English Lake District. The dogs have no idea how to survive in the wild but fortunately make friends with a wise fox (tod) who gives them advice and warnings. They band together to hunt, killing sheep and stealing chickens from farmyards whenever they can. Of course, that infuriates the farmers who raise a ruckus.

At first the lab refuses to comment on whether they have lost any dogs, which seems disingenuous and suspicious, but a sharp reporter is assigned to ferret out the news story. Unfortunately, he is more interested in advancing his career and selling newspapers than in telling the truth and spreads the rumor that the lab has been doing bubonic-plague testing and the dogs may have been infected. The resulting panic and a few unfortunate accidents/deaths bring out the heavy reinforcements to hunt down the 'vicious' animals. Lots of heart-wrenching moments and some surprising plot twists/turns make for a very satisfying read.

Rating the book was hard though. I vascillated but settled on 4 stars even though there were several things to criticize about the writing that could have knocked it down to 3 if I hadn't felt such sympathy for the dogs and their plight.

Some bones of contention for me: Conversations in dialect may have been deemed authentic but make for some pretty heavy going, even with the small glossary Adams includes for 'American readers.'

Twenty-nine illustrations of the landscape by A. Wainwright and Adams' beautiful descriptions bring the Lake District countryside to life, but occasionally he doesn't seem to realize when enough is enough. Sadly, these and several head-scratching digressions tend to slow down the story's momentum.

In a peculiar way, Adams inserts himself into the story now and then, talking to the reader as an aside, which seems a bit strange and jarring while reading a story being told in the third person.

And he takes one notable occasion to harangue about how animals should be treated by humans while building up to the conclusion of an important and emotional scene. The two men involved in this conversation go so far as to mention Richard Adams as a well-intentioned author who knew next to nothing about rabbits! (Tongue-in-cheek joke, I suppose, but still a bit weird at that moment.)

The book was written in the year 1977 which I recall as being a time when there was a big outcry about the cruel way cosmetic products were being tested on animals and gruesome horror stories and photos abounded--which makes me wonder if Adams chose to write this book at that time with perhaps the hope that people would read it and be swayed to become activists for animal rights. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)was founded shortly thereafter, in March of 1980. ...more

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Jul 07, 2017 Mindi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If you have known me for any period time, you probably know that Watership Down is my all time favorite novel. So, you may be surprised to learn that I have just now read The Plague Dogs. That's odd, right? You would think I would be practically falling over myself to read this, and I did try to, years ago. I think I was in high school when I bought my first copy, and I couldn't even finish the first chapter. This may have been one of my earliest DNFs.

Before I read Watership Down I saw the film If you have known me for any period time, you probably know that Watership Down is my all time favorite novel. So, you may be surprised to learn that I have just now read The Plague Dogs. That's odd, right? You would think I would be practically falling over myself to read this, and I did try to, years ago. I think I was in high school when I bought my first copy, and I couldn't even finish the first chapter. This may have been one of my earliest DNFs.

Before I read Watership Down I saw the film as a young child. Years later I learned that the film was based on a book, and I immediately read it. I loved it so much that I was overjoyed to discover that Adams had other novels, and that those books had very good reviews as well. I took my allowance to my favorite independent bookstore and bought my first copy of The Plague Dogs (which I still own).

I pretty much knew most of what was going to happen when I read Watership Down, since the film follows the book rather closely. However, I knew almost nothing about The Plague Dogs, and as a teen I was completely unprepared for the subject matter.

Even more so than Watership Down, The Plague Dogs is Adams' opus against animal cruelty. The book starts at a horrendous facility in the Lake District in England called Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental) or apty, ARSE, for short. In the first few pages, the scientist are testing a dog to see how long it takes him to drown in a pool of water before they resuscitate him and do it all over again the next day. I couldn't read past these pages the first time I picked up the novel, and I've heard quite a few other people say the same thing. Now that I have finished the novel I can finally say that I am so glad I gave it another chance.

As an animal lover, this book is incredibly hard to read, but it is so worth it. Adams' writing is poetic and brilliant, and his message strong and deeply important. Two of the dogs in the research facility manage to escape, and the remainder of the novel involves their fight for survival in the Lake District as one misfortune after another befalls them, and ultimately leaves them hunted by every man in the area, including the government. The story switches between dog and human POVs, and Adams even breaks the forth wall in the last few pages to address the horrors of animal cruelty.

I didn't know if I would be able to make it through the entire book, but I'm so happy that I did. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Once again Richard Adams has left me astonished and amazed. This story will stay with me forever. ...more

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Oct 04, 2017 J.K. Grice rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

An absolutely fascinating tale of two dogs that escape from a testing facility. Adams wonderfully chronicles their journey into the unknown world.

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Oct 14, 2007 C.L. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Inteligent Readers

Bit of a spoiler following as I am discussing the book, itself, not just the jacket. Also, much of the book resembles the animated film, but the ending is entirely different--the film stops while the novel keeps going.

This novel chronicles medical experimentation in horrific detail. It is depressing, as many have said, but what makes it depressing is that it forces the reader to face profoundly shameful things that happen, or have happened, quite frequently, things that we allow or have allowed Bit of a spoiler following as I am discussing the book, itself, not just the jacket. Also, much of the book resembles the animated film, but the ending is entirely different--the film stops while the novel keeps going.

This novel chronicles medical experimentation in horrific detail. It is depressing, as many have said, but what makes it depressing is that it forces the reader to face profoundly shameful things that happen, or have happened, quite frequently, things that we allow or have allowed to happen to various animals. What I am saying is that much of the book is a kind of propoganda, in the truest sense of the word. Adams shows us where our cosmetics (and medicines and many other things) come from, most effectively with blinded bunnies who act as a kind of symbolic Godhead, "watching" all that happens. He seems to want us to be horrified and ashamed, which makes much of the book difficult to read. Towards the end, though, he does something really interesting. The book is progressing to a logical end, and Adams steps in with a nice postmodern trick and adopts the voice of the reader addressing him, the author. "How can you end it like this?" the reader essentially says. (Aah, Adams may well be saying, how can YOU let it end like this?) Adams then introduces a pair of environmentalists (who discuss Adams own work, not necessarily positively) and appear poised to miraculously change the tide. Adams also goes back and touches on certain characters, one of the scientists, especially, and fleshes them out for the first time, showing the reader a little bit of perspective, which raises the book from propaganda into the novel form. But since the reader has experienced 300 pages of animal torture previous, 15 pages of well-meaning hardly displaces the shame. It is an obviously false happy turn Adams is showing us. I found this fascinating and very well-done. Readers of Watership Down (and nothing else), I would think, would be lost and very disappointed with this book. I say this because I am considering WD as a sort of advanced YA or kids fiction book. This is definately not that. This is a very complex novel, the sort of thing I wished I'd been able to read in college instead of having to read Beowolf 4 times. (Nothing against Beowolf, it's the 4 times that got me.) I can't say that I enjoyed this book, but the ending was very well-done. So I'll let it stand and say well done to Mr. Adams. ...more

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May 10, 2007 Keith rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I started this book at least ten times before I could read past the first chapter. This book will destroy the heart of any animal lover. It is the story of two animals that escape from an animal testing lab from the point of view of the animals. While the writing can be hard to absorb as Adams tries to show the mental condition of the characters, the tale is well worth the read. It seems to me to be a good way to step out of what we know and see the world from a different set of eyes.

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Oct 29, 2019 da AL rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Watership Down is one of my favorite books. If this too wasn't written by Richard Adams, I would've set it aside -- a book about escaped lab animals is sure to end predictably and badly, right? Despite that and despite Adams admitting that he could be preachy, this audiobook definitely worthwhile, entertaining as well as educational. Performer Ralph Cosham brought it further to life in the best way! ...more

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Nov 08, 2019 Chana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: animal-stories, british

Would that every person and animal in this world were safe and loved, had enough food and shelter, were treated well and had no enemies trying to maim or kill them.

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Mar 18, 2012 Patrick rated it liked it · review of another edition

There are a lot of things not to like about this book. It seems to go against everything your average Eng Lit graduate would consider ‘good’ writing. It’s rambling, overwritten, loosely edited and willfully biased. It’s peppered with gratuitous literary references, weighed down by lengthy passages of leaden political satire, and the whole thing has the slightly ponderous air of the kind of book a retired civil servant would write. (Which is perhaps appropriate because that’s exactly what Adams w There are a lot of things not to like about this book. It seems to go against everything your average Eng Lit graduate would consider ‘good’ writing. It’s rambling, overwritten, loosely edited and willfully biased. It’s peppered with gratuitous literary references, weighed down by lengthy passages of leaden political satire, and the whole thing has the slightly ponderous air of the kind of book a retired civil servant would write. (Which is perhaps appropriate because that’s exactly what Adams was when he wrote it.)

If one purpose of a novel is to present a balanced, sympathetic view of a society or culture, then The Plague Dogs fails on that front too. The central topic – vivisection – is something about which the author has absolutely nothing good to say. He also has very little sympathy for the men who perpetuate it. Careering madly through Godwin’s Law, Adams goes so far as to trace a comparison between the state of animal testing in the 1970s and experiments carried out by Mengele under the Nazis. Thousands of words are dedicated to descriptions of unpleasant experiments (all of which are taken from true accounts) carried out on dogs, birds, rabbits and monkeys. Very little of this is directly relevant to the central plot, in which a pair of dogs escape from a testing lab and run wild in the Lake District, but then there’s quite a lot else in this book that’s not really relevant to that either. After a while you get used to it.

And yet I enjoyed the book very much, for all the reasons given above. I may not agree with everything Adams wrote, but I liked the way in which he wrote it. This isn’t even about kitsch value: I liked The Plague Dogs because it is so absurdly digressive, so completely unfussed about sticking rigidly to conventional notions of what makes for fine literature. I liked it because one of the main characters is post-operative dog who spends most of the book wandering around with a crack in his skull exposing his brain to the open air.

I liked it because it’s shot through with a vein of angry misanthropy, being set firmly in a world where for the most part terrible, incomprehensible things happen to the best of people (and animals). I liked that reading it is like reading a tall story told by an angry old fellow in a pub who’s a bit drunk and keeps forgetting what he was talking about if only to buttonhole you regarding the state of the nation. And I liked it because there is some nature writing here which is unquestionably very beautiful. ...more

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Mar 25, 2010 Jackie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: mildly-traumatizing

It's not that this isn't a well written, thought provoking book. It is both of those things. It just isn't the kind of book that I like to read, because it's just too...sad. Too painful. Too much for me, with my delicate sensibilities.

It is, in fact, quite a good book. If you like Richard Adams, or if you do not like animal testing and are looking to get emotionally charged up about it, this would be a good book to read. If you are extremely sensitive about unreasonable abuse/violence to animal ...more

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Oct 22, 2007 Bess rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: those who enjoyed Watership Down

Shelves: animals

One of the saddest books I have ever read. As an animal lover, especially somone who loves dogs it was very hard to finish-but the ending was appropriate and Adams's gift for storytelling helps soften the blow at the end of the journey.
It did make me hate scientists for awhile, though. ...more

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Jul 24, 2013 Bionic Jean rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: animals, read-authors-a-b

Gruelling fantasy with a serious underlying message.

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Nov 09, 2014 Yasza rated it really liked it · review of another edition

3 stars for the whole story (because it might be 2 times shorter) and 5 stars for the ending

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Jan 23, 2018 TheVampireBookworm rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Prepare your tissues just in case... I get always very emotional when it comes to animals so when something happens in a lab that conducts tests on them and the two main canine characters remind me of my own dogs, my eyes get very misty.
But let's talk about the structure first. The book follows multiple participants on the plot so there are moments in which we follow the two main charaters who are dogs and experience their inner life (I wish my dogs could hold meaningful conversations like that ...more

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Mar 24, 2020 Steve Shilstone rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Adams breaks many a literary rule in this glorious chase across the English Lake District. Many a nugget for students of literary and art history. Far superior to the deservedly famous rabbit book.

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Apr 26, 2019 Joshi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, 2019

Oh my, what a journey. To shortly describe the plot, this book is the tale of two dogs who escape their looming demise at an animal research facility and afterwards try to survive in the wilderness of the Lake District in northern England and by doing so they unintentionally cause quite the uproar. In addition to the two dogs they are joined by a fox and large parts of the book are also written from the point of view of human characters, scientists, journalists, farmers and even politicians all Oh my, what a journey. To shortly describe the plot, this book is the tale of two dogs who escape their looming demise at an animal research facility and afterwards try to survive in the wilderness of the Lake District in northern England and by doing so they unintentionally cause quite the uproar. In addition to the two dogs they are joined by a fox and large parts of the book are also written from the point of view of human characters, scientists, journalists, farmers and even politicians all the way to the south in London.

The chapters from the dogs' point of view are almost always heart breaking. One of them, Snitter, did once have an owner while the other, Rowf, never did. Subsequently, while Snitter wants to find a new owner (as he knows that some people are not bad, Rowf (who never knew anyone other than the scientists experimenting on him) wants nothing more than to get away from them. The experiments conducted on them also add another layer in their interactions: Snitter had undergone brain surgery and trouble in telling dreams and reality apart, often hallucinating. Rowf was part of a sick experiment where he had been placed in a water filled tank again and again to see if he would manage to stay afloat for longer each time, but in his view of what a good dog was supposed to do, he had failed his owners by escaping instead of drowning as they wanted him to.

The human characters are great, although some of them are greatly evil more than anything. Really going into more detail on them would spoil too much, but I'll just say that at the end of the book you will have a more positive outlook on some of them...others just remain pure evil. Especially on the last 100 pages or so there are many quite philosophical and 'deep' remarks and discussions by the human characters as the story (quite rapidly I must say) approaches it's end, which I did not expect at all to go down like that.

The writing is excellent as I expected after reading Watership Down and I just love Richard Adams style, how he manages to slide in metaphors to the ancient Greek and Roman world and how he writes in general...I can't really describe it, but reading his stories is a joy. On the topic of Richard Adams I'd just like to say that I'd have loved to meet him, he seems like a great man who deeply cared about animals, the environment and the nature of his native England.

Overall, I'd say I enjoyed Watership Down a bit more but this book is nonetheless excellent.

And I don't know where to put this in this review so I'll say it here: perhaps the saddest thing I'll take from this book isn't any part of the story really but more from the introduction, that all the experiments performed on animals in this book have actually been conducted in the real world. ...more

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Apr 30, 2015 Wanda Hartzenberg added it · review of another edition

The Plague Dogs

I honestly do not know if I should recommend this book or warn people off of it.
It is a good book but any violence towards dogs, pets in general rubs me the wrong way and this degree of neglect, torture in the name of science etc is extreme.

Note, the true message is awesome. The writing is superb, I have seldom disliked so many characters so violently!
The plot line is intricate and flawless.
But....the poor puppies. Even the rats got to me and trust me, rats, spiders, mice etc s ...more

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Apr 16, 2017 Sumit Singla rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, most-disturbing, 2017, 4-stars, books-featuring-animals

This is probably the bleakest book I've read all year. It tells the tale of two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, who manage to escape from an animal research facility. The experiments that are being carried out at the facility are barbaric and make for tough reading.

The damaged past that Rowf and Snitter have faced impacts their current lives too, and Rowf has a deep-rooted mistrust of mankind. On the other hand, Snitter suffers from some kind of hallucinations or visions, and some of these seem to be st ...more

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Sep 14, 2020 Marcus Johnston rated it it was ok · review of another edition

After I read Watership Down (30 years ago), I remember picking this book up and... immediately put it down just after the preface. I really should have listened to my younger self.

This book is... meh. The two main characters (the dogs) are somewhat interesting, all but two of the (surviving) human characters stick in my memory. The dogs have an adventure, but it's aimless, and doesn't seem to go anywhere. It's like the author wanted to do a travel guide to the Lake District rather than a novel. ...more

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Jan 11, 2015 Lis Carey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dogs, fiction, audiobooks

Rowf, a big, shaggy, black mongrel dog, and Snitter, a black and white fox terrier, are experimental animals at the Animal Research Station--Scientific & Experimental (A.R.S.E.) Rowf was born there, but Snitter once had a loving master and a happy home, until his master was struck by a lorry in an accident that Snitter blames himself for. The two dogs, living in adjoining pens, have become friends, and share their experiences: Rowf is daily nearly drowned in a tank of water, while Snitter has ha Rowf, a big, shaggy, black mongrel dog, and Snitter, a black and white fox terrier, are experimental animals at the Animal Research Station--Scientific & Experimental (A.R.S.E.) Rowf was born there, but Snitter once had a loving master and a happy home, until his master was struck by a lorry in an accident that Snitter blames himself for. The two dogs, living in adjoining pens, have become friends, and share their experiences: Rowf is daily nearly drowned in a tank of water, while Snitter has had brain surgery that breaks down the barrier between conscious and unconscious minds, and consequently has mad waking dreams. When carelessness by the animal care man gives them an opportunity, they break out of their pens and subsequently out of the facility via the heating system.

That's when life gets really hard for them.

Rowf and Snitter are not equipped to live as wild animals. They struggle along, trying to understand the unfamiliar world of the English lake district countryside, for a time with the help of a fox they call The Tod. Meanwhile, in the human world, the scientists' initial attempts to simply ignore the escape of the dogs breaks down and makes the situation even worse when the dogs' sheep killing angers the farmers and a muckraking reporter seizes on the story to create public outrage and sell newspapers. The dogs are soon fleeing active pursuit by people who believe them to be carrying bubonic plague.

[Note 1. Dogs can't carry bubonic plague. Note 2. Despite its ravages in the 14th century, and the death grip it apparently still has on the fear centers of the British brain, bubonic plague is now easily treated with penicillin. It's endemic in the rodent population of the American west, and every year there are a few human cases. It's a really, really bad year when even one person dies. But as recently as the 1990s, the British were driven to impressive heights of hysteria by a few human cases of plague in India, during what was a really bad year for it there.]

Adams is of course sounding a warning note about the moral issues of animal experimentation. Rowf's torment seems impossible to defend; if there is a real purpose to Snitter's brain surgery, we never receive it. Nor are these the most horrific experiments being conducted at A.R.S.E. At the same time, Adams is not setting up cardboard villains, and we see other research at A.R.S.E. stopping the release of truly dangerous products to the unsuspecting public.

But this is,profoundly, the case for the animals, and for their lives to be valued, and not wasted carelessly or for shallow reasons. I was totally captivated by the dogs, and deeply moved by their story.

Highly recommended. ...more

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Sep 29, 2009 Andrew Farr rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book was a major disappointment after loving Watership Down and Tales From Watership Down.

There were a lot of humans in this book. It clouded things quite a bit. In Watership Down we are taken into a new world because the rabbits are wild and they have their own folk-lore, language and interesting little bits of culture. In this book, however, the dogs only know man. They do not know the wild or nature. This keeps the story from truly captivating the reader by bringing him into a different This book was a major disappointment after loving Watership Down and Tales From Watership Down.

There were a lot of humans in this book. It clouded things quite a bit. In Watership Down we are taken into a new world because the rabbits are wild and they have their own folk-lore, language and interesting little bits of culture. In this book, however, the dogs only know man. They do not know the wild or nature. This keeps the story from truly captivating the reader by bringing him into a different reality. The reality of this book is a reality of humans, and the dogs often wonder why men changed the natural houses into things like unnatural trees and rocks. Furthermore, the author doesn't even attempt to show any use of natural instinct on the dogs' part.

There are huge dialectual barriers as well. Half of the humans in the story, as well as the fox they meet along the way, speak in a very thick accent and strange dialect which is tough to adjust to. Several times I had to keep reading and re-reading sections, eventually giving up on getting anything from them. At times is does become easy to understand, however. The real annoyance is that one of the main character is not always in a sane state of mind, so sometimes he rambles on and on in a sort of nonsense. Between these two huge barriers it was difficult for me to really have any sense of determination to read on.

I tredged along though.

The sybolism of Watership Down is completely abandoned in this book. The reader is taken into a story where he can observe the evil deeds of humans (and there are not many deeds which aren't evil in this book). This book says exactly what it means without allowing the reader to seek out any deeper meaning.

Our heroes never seem to really acheive the respect that title holds. They stumble through this book and never seem to learn much, form any plan or be self preserving. In the end the dogs should have died. I didn't want them to, don't get me wrong, but the entire tone of the novel builds up to an ending that completely disagrees with the entire novel. Adams wasn't brave enough to break our hearts. You do learn to like the main characters, for some reason. Whereas they are not good at what they are doing, and are constantly frustrating the reader with errors, you do feel sorry for them. Their actions are not weighed on as good or bad in any way, only necessary (with that, I will add this is a fairly violent book), and without knowing they had escaped from horrible animal testing practices they would not gain any ground in the readers' hearts. ...more

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Dec 31, 2020 Lupin Sanchez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Can we, and is there a point in trying to, draw direct equivalents between the Western Canon and a furry one? We could say, for instance, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach is the furry New Testament, with its many passages about Jesus. Following that train of thought, maybe the Old Testament could be Watership Down, which gave new life to the concept of talking animals as acceptable subjects of serious literature, being arguably the first example since George Orwell's 1945 Animal Can we, and is there a point in trying to, draw direct equivalents between the Western Canon and a furry one? We could say, for instance, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach is the furry New Testament, with its many passages about Jesus. Following that train of thought, maybe the Old Testament could be Watership Down, which gave new life to the concept of talking animals as acceptable subjects of serious literature, being arguably the first example since George Orwell's 1945 Animal Farm. What to make, then, of Adam's next furry novel, The Plague Dogs? It certainly never became as well known as Watership, despite the author considering it his best work; this may be because, as scholar Anja Höing argues, that "unlike most other talking animal stories, the book does not invite the reader into a suspenseful yet beautiful secondary world of talking animals, but lays open the injustices and cruelties animals have to face in a thoroughly anthropocentric world."
Considering Adams calls it his magnus opus, I believe it's worth holding Plague Dogs to closer scrutiny, to spread awareness of its genius.

I believe everything comes from something, and if you track down the roots it can end up looking like a beautiful family tree.

Just as there couldn't have been Watership Down without Animal Farm, believe it or not, there probably couldn't have been a Plague Dogs without Mrs Brisby and the Rats of NIMH, which actually came out six years before. Obviously, they can't be very well compared. Watchers of NIMH's more popular movie adaptation will remember its main theme being about prevailing through bravery and how motherhood can surpass any obstacle, but that was actually pretty much absent in the book. In the book Mrs Brisby is saved by Justin the rat in most instances, and she's not even involved with the story's resolution. Remember Justin? Guilty of creating countless new furries, of many young kid's first crush? Well, actually that's in the novel too - they keep stressing how handsome he is. Funny, that. But anyway, is there a themes left in the book? Well, you could say its about teaching kids how to read, as the foreword explains: "For readers, the rats of NIMH are a classic group of vulnerable underdogs who become strong and outwit their oppressors, not through the acquisition of familiar comic-book super powers but by the simpler yet equally effective power of learning to read. It’s a message with strong resonance for all readers who are themselves, in a way, also growing more powerful because of what they are learning even as they read the story."
The Plague Dogs, clearly, has higher goals than teaching how to read. The novels aren't, however, without common points.
Both are about animals escaping from scientific experiments, even if one is for kids and the other is a, well, lovely edgefest. They also share an ambiguous open ending: in NIMH's book, it ends with Justin disappearing and the author died before she could confirm if he lived or not. Pretty out there for a kid's book, though there's a precedent in Stuart Little's open ending.
So, if we assume Plague Dogs aims higher as it makes sense for an adult's book, what could we compare it to with the Western Canon? I say Shakespeare.

For one, because it opens with a quotation of Cymbeline and proceeds to reference King Lear, Hamlet and Winter's Tale; throughout the novel, the narrator champions the voice of literature over the voice of science. We get to know him as a highly educated, at times even lyrical storyteller who is able to draw inspiration from virtually the entirety of the Western canon. He references Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, Freud, the muse Urania, James Joyce, Blake, Milton, Thucydides, Cervantes, Golding, the Bible, T.S. Elliot, Orwell, Brontë, Euripides, Plato, Marlowe, Bunyan... oh, and Dr. Dollittle.
Normally, you'd use previous works to transmit your own message, but Adams shows up the shortcomings of the discourse of “literature” in a similar way to his dismantling of the discourse of science. Obviously, this work trashes science quite a bit, since it’s openly against animal experiments. But going back to the literature aspect, in the first scene of the story, for example, the narrator describes a tank fouled with urine and saliva while Rowf is fighting for his life. The surface is “a watery harlequin’s coat of tilting planes and lozenges in movement”, the “streaks of urine” are “gilded”, and bubbles of saliva are rocking “turgidly”. In this description, we realize a gap between narrator himself: a gap between the tenor and the vehicles of metaphors. The narrator’s language is the language of “literature,” but just like the empty discourse of science, the high register and metaphorical complexity of literature doesn't unveil reality. Instead, it glosses over the sufferings of Rowf, who, pointedly, in this scene is refused both agency and a voice. In presenting as an epitome of beauty what is in fact a hideous reality, the narrator is literally reliable but metaphorically unreliable. Convention has taught us to consider the metaphorical level the apex of literary language, and to trust it above all others, so this creates a substantial gap between narrator and reader.

Is this enough, then, to make it the furry Shakespeare? There is another aspect. The novel's set in Lake District, Britain, where people speak Georgie English, which, as the author explains in a preface, still uses King Lear's genitive (this of thee) and many remains of Elizabethan English such as Thy and Thee. As one of three main characters, the fox Tod, speaks Georgie, understanding him can be quite a difficult thing. This is just one example of his dialogue: “Ye best stick te killin’ yows wi’ me, hinny. Thoo’s a grand chep for yon, an’ Ah’ll bide wi’ ye an’ aall. But howway wivvus noo, an’ us hangin’ aboot here, plain as yon moon i’ th’ sky!”

This is no mere Shakespearean similitude, though. Adams uses the obfuscation as a motif for the entire novel; another of the main characters, Snitter, suffered a brain surgery intended to make him "confuse the objective with the subjective". Interpret that as you may, although Adams claims all of the experiments portrayed happened in real life, but the effect is that dream and reality are often blurred, and narration is so unrealiable we're in the dark just as much as the dogs. We're in the dark linguistically, as the Tod's speech is like a puzzle to solve; physically, as the characters traverse mist and, as their hunger gets worse, they "lie tense in a directionless, scentless obscurity where there is neither up nor down"; geographically, as the scarse illustrations in the novel show only repetitive mountains that blend together, plus some maps, which only make things worse, as they show the path the characters take but often appear before that path has been taken; and the only markers are the names of mountains and countryside spots, all of which sound the same and are of no help unless you're looking at a map.

This is all to the effect of contrasting the dogs' adventure to the world of the humans, the real vs. the ideal. The ideal, yes, the Platonic Ideal. As the novel explains, after directly naming Plato, "A tiger presumably ought to have a reasonable chance of being able to approximate to an ideal of tiger and a sparrow to an ideal of sparrow. Surely our part in that lot is to do what we can to see that animals live in a world wherethey can fulfil their various functions, insofar as that's consistent with our own reasonable survival and happiness."

*This review used conclusions drawn by Anja Höing, Germany, and David Collado Rodriguez, Spain. ...more

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Jul 25, 2008 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Animal lovers

Well where to start. I've had this book for about 10 years now, and never got around to reading it completely until now. There's some characters that talk in their native dialect (think a heavy scottish accent) and the author has written their speech the way it would sound. I think this was the reason I had originally stopped reading so many years ago. Really though, once you catch on to the words (and there's actually a glossary included) it's not so bad. There's only a few characters who speak ...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Stefan Yates rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, stefan-dusty-bookshelf-2012

If 1/2 stars were available I'd give this book a 2 1/2 instead of 3 star rating. It's not that it was all that terribly bad, I just felt that it was incredible average and quite honestly blah in parts. From what I have heard, and read myself, I feel that this is definitely the low point in Richard Adams' writing.

I think that my two main problems with this book are first the amount of space that Adams uses to push his political agenda down the reader's throat. While I totally agree that the inhum ...more

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About Richard Adams

Richard Adams

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Adams was born in Newbury, Berkshire. From 1933 until 1938 he was educated at Bradfield College. In 1938 he went up to Worcester College, Oxford to read Modern History. On 3 September 1939 Neville Chamberlain announced that the United Kingdom was at war with Germany. In 1940 Adams joined the British Army, in which he served until 1946. He received a class B discharge enabling him to return to Worc ...more

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“Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?” — 24 likes

“When the man was disgraced and told to go away, he was allowed to ask all the animals whether any of them would come with him and share his fortunes and his life. There were only two who agreed to come entirely of their own accord, and they were the dog and the cat. And ever since then, those two have been jealous of each other, and each is for ever trying to make man choose which one he likes best. Every man prefers one or the other.” — 16 likes

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