I think I can safely say there wasnt much enthusisam for Even the Dogs, I really wanted to love it as it had an award and looked at challenging issues whichI thought would provoke a debate. However, despite that I along with everyone else found it a toil and had to force myself to finish it (it was my choice afterall).

The drudgery and shambolic lifestyles of the characters (not to mention the writing style) led me to feel frustrated and not at all "in" their thought pattern as it became boring (and even more of an irritation) through overuse of the same


(technique).

The constant flitting about between character made it difficult to develop a relationship with any of them. In fact to some extent I thought they all kind of rolled into one (or maybe that was me not caring to look properly?!)

The realistic portrayal in creating the scenes and backdrop did lead our group to wonder about the authors background; the detailing was graphic in places although he never states which city is featured - it was somehow familiar to us all though. This led to an interesting discussion about helping this section of society, which as he is saying exists everywhere in a way which is actually helpful and how lucky we really are to have so much when some have so little.