André Alexis's Fifteen Dogs: A Novel About Friendship and Fate

Amazon Customer: A very philosophical book. I love this book. I bought 7 books as gifts

Canada on Nov 17, 2023

Finknottle: I won’t forget this book because the plot is so odd. However it is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. I could never recommend it to anyone.

United States on Aug 19, 2023

D B.: Apologies for borrowing Bulgakov's title. This is a good book, a journey within several dogs at some length and their view of the world and their places in it are revelatory. Didn't like it so much at first but it grew on me like a mutt you adopt from a shelter.

United States on Jul 01, 2023

Fat Jon: This is a very solid book, well-written, thoughtful and thought-provoking. A story that starts with a conversation between Olympian deities in a bar in Toronto as the preamble to a fable about talking dogs might now sound all that promising but the story is so well written and the messages delivered so clearly without being heavy handed that the reader is carried along without any resistance. I found the story about the dogs touching and affecting and the messages it conveyed about human behaviour meaningful and timely. A very worthwhile read.

United States on Nov 08, 2020

Carlos Guerrero de Lizardi: Una de las diez mejores novelas que he leído en mi vida!!

Mexico on May 02, 2019

sedgewick: The gods' wager and the book's premise - will 15 dogs die in a happy or unhappy state after having been granted human conscience and language - is haunting. Events start like rivulets, then forming into creeks as the characters and destinies of the dogs and the pack develop, to finally, with the last surviving dog, becoming a large and unfathomably wide river full of unanswered secrets and questions about what represents a good life and a good death, and what eventually remains as eternal. Pity for those who abandon the book too early upstream!

Based on the premise of the wager, the book obviously has a philosophical bent, but never do the dogs in the story become mere 'canine' humans though. They retain their 'dogginess' throughout despite their ability to think rationally in human terms and to understand and speak human language. This makes their ability to reflect on the human and their own condition in an urban setting all the more alluring. A worthy modern parable for our times.

United States on May 17, 2017

Nigel Melville: My bookshelves aren't arranged in any order – just as well, for I have no idea where to put this oddity. It begins in a bar in Toronto, where the Greek gods Hermes and Apollo are having a quiet drink and a discussion about being human and what might happen if animals had human intelligence. Intellectual stuff, and we're only on page 2. Apollo bets Hermes that animals would be even unhappier than humans if they had our intelligence, and Hermes takes on the bet – on condition that if only one animal is happy at the moment of its death, he wins.

Leaving the bar, they pass a vet's surgery, and grant human intelligence to the fifteen inmates, from a toy poodle to a Great Dane. From then on, it's the dogs' story – or maybe it's an allegory of the human condition … The dogs have the intelligence to escape the surgery; but one of the fifteen feels she is just too old and set in her ways to change The others form a pack, and that's where the troubles begin. Some of them embrace their new status, one of them finds a poetic voice, another learns that language can be shared with humans and so lead to a deeper master-dog relationship. But for a small group in the pack, “This...

United Kingdom on Mar 01, 2017

sunny: I gobbled this book up. This poignant and gripping tale got me thinking about humans and society: the role of language in conflict and peace, group think and how it affects us, how power is expressed in our relationships, how art inspires us and how love lifts us.
I liked the way André Alexis developed his characters. Each of them had individual strengths and weaknesses and dealt with their new consciousness as well as with the more or less spectacular hardships they experienced in ways that seemed congruent with their personalities.
I also really liked the idea of framing the whole fable with a 'Two gods walk into a bar...' joke. But that of course is a matter of taste...

Germany on Jan 05, 2017

Amazon Customer: I absolutely adored this book from beginning to end. Moments of brutality, moments of delight, so much to consider and deeply moving. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is also a very easy read. 15 Dogs is utterly spectacular.

Australia on Sep 24, 2016

dennis wentraub: Spoiler alert: You will have a tear in your eye by the end of this metaphysical fantasy- more questions than answers, and pets bewildered by your renewed affection. Warning: this book is guaranteed to detonate arguments in book clubs and college dorms. Decades my have past since you read Greek mythology, but recall that their gods were capricious, whimsical, often meddling with the fates of earthly creatures, but also occasionally beneficent...so don't be surprised when you next drop into your favorite watering hole - here, The Wheat Sheaf Tavern at King and Bathurst (Toronto) - if your bearded bar mate downing the suds is really on a different plane, there to observe your behavior and make a wager on the nature of humanity. Among the questions quaffed in this fast moving animal tale are to what extent intelligence is a source of unhappiness. Do words and imagination only confound? Is it better to "think" or to "know" (instinct)? Is collective behavior a 'good' or is it just uniformity? Is a hierarchical order, a "geometry of dominance", a natural good that when challenged only leads to pain and unhappiness? Are we only true to our real nature without gods and governments? If you...

United States on Nov 15, 2015