Kirsten Bakis

I had to stop reading this book.

I was able to get 30% of the way through the book and it just became so over the top.

A group of dogs that are able to talk via voice box, and have prosthetic arms with working fingers, have tons of money, and insist on wearing Prussian style clothing from the 1800s arrive in 2009 Manhattan. The dogs had killed their masters, humans that were treating the dogs as slaves in some remote area in Canada. They collected all the money, jewels, gold, etc and ran to New York and announce their arrival by helicopter.

And … Manhattan seems okay with this? Like it’s not a big deal that these large furry dogs are walking around in very expensive frippery, buying up real estate, booking spots on news programs. Cleo Pira, one of the main characters, writes a news article saying “Some people are surprised they haven’t vanished yet: been debunked, proved to be a collective hallucination.” Id like to believe that this book I hold in my hands is a massive hallucination, but seeing evidence that so many have also read and reviewed this book would prove otherwise.

In one of the beginning chapters (because that’s all I really got through) the early life of Augustus Rank, the creator of these “Monster Dogs” is written out, part biography by one of the dogs and part memoir by Augustus himself. In these brief passages, we find that Augustus experimented on animals from a young age, first birds, where the author Kirsten Bakis gives an extremely detailed account of the feeling of a knife entering the birds body, then moved on to bats, mice, cats, and culminating with a grotesque surgery on a cow. And no one bats an eye other than at the financial cost young Augustus has caused.

What really sealed my ability to finish the book was a diary entry from Augustus where he describes murdering his half brother, and then 2 paragraphs later says that he has a woman in his head. But a note from the dog that is attempting to be a historian and write about Augustus says that this never comes up again?? So we’re just reading the thoughts of a deranged killer. Point blank. And this person is also supposed to be some great mind who is responsible for creating these “monster dogs” that may be dying or reverting back to dog form.

Also there appear to just be laser guns in this 2009 Manhattan that people just wear on their hips.

I don’t know what you’re looking for in a story, but I can promise you, this isn’t it.… (mehr)

This book had been on my wish list for so long that it's probably a bigger disappointment to me than it would have been if I'd just picked it up without knowing anything about it other than its intriguing title.

The plot, a synopsis of which was what interested me originally in this book, involves a group of artificially enhanced, intelligent dogs of mysterious origins who have moved to the New York City of the near future. A graduate student, Cleo, is one of the few humans admitted into their social circle. There are so many interesting ideas that are raised and could have been explored, but instead we are told way too much about Cleo's none-too-interesting personal angst and are ultimately treated to metaphysical babble that sheds no light on—in fact, seems to have nothing to do with—the very interesting moral, philosophical, and even medical issues that these monstrous dogs (and they are monstrous in some ways) would have, or with the enigma of their grisly creator, Augustus Rank. The story of the dogs' origin is presented early on, and its titillatingly gruesome details are rather a red herring, since the dogs' own feelings about their creator is never really revealed.

Rarely has such a good premise, full of so many ideas ripe for exploration, been utilized so poorly. Even Cleo, the dogs' human spokesperson, is underdrawn. We learn far more about her taste in clothes than about the reason for her fascination with the dogs. Ultimately, while this book isn't monstrous, it is a dog. I wonder why it was short-listed for the Orange Prize.… (mehr)