Currently Reading #26

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

After a bit of poking around the piles of books hoping to be read, I settled on Nancy Kress's Dogs.

The writing is perhaps a bit mechanical, utilitarian maybe, with no concessions to literary flourishes. But it gets the job done. My major problem so far is the difficulty of keeping so many characters straight. A bit like a Horror novel, Dogs jumps from one character to another and sometimes I'm halfway through a character's narrative before I've remembered which one they are. A little more distinction for the characters--or simply fewer narrators--might have helped here.

The premise is deceptively simple: the dogs in the small town of Tyler have suddenly started turning vicious. Children are being killed. FEMA, the CDC, the local animal control and Tessa, a former FBI agent, are all trying to find out why this has suddenly happened. Tyler is under quarantine and all dogs are being rounded up. Some owners are co-operative. Some are not. And you never know which dog is going to turn next....