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 must struggle to survive in their new environment. When the starving dogs attack some sheep, they are labeled ferocious man-eating monsters, setting off a great dog hunt that is later intensified by the fear that the dogs could be carriers of the bubonic plague.
This is a hard book to review because it is so painful to read. Overall it was well-written, though some of the middle sections could have used tighter editing, and the tagged-on ending, welcome as it was, just felt weird and a little too tongue-in-cheek for the tone of the rest of the book (though in an England where the bad guys are named things like Boycott and they run a research lab called ARSE, I suppose it fit better than it might have otherwise). But the fact is that a book that starts with descriptions of animal abuse, and proceeds with animal suffering for a few hundred pages, can be important and well-executed, but will never be the ideal for comforting evening reading by the fire. ( )
An allegorical tale of love and the struggle of good against evil. Two dogs escape from a laboratory using animals in their experiments. I know I read it when it first came out and I know I enjoyed it, but I don't really remember much about it, so can't give it more than 3*. ( )
What a disappointment compared to Watership Down! 2 stars is generous. There is an extensive review on my shelf, but this book commits the cardinal sin of being boring . . .and 480 pages of boring is not good! ( )
Adams writes a book about two dogs who escape from an animal experimentation station. They are physically and mentally traumatized by the torture done to them, but they have no idea what is in store for them, trying to live as wild animals in the Scotland Highlands in winter.
This is a lovely tale and it's written with lovely language, and worth every one of its five stars. ( )
QUEEN: I will try the forces Of these thy compounds on such creatures as We count not worth the hanging, but none human . . . CORNELIUS: Your Highness Shall from this practice but make hard your heart.
—Shakespeare, Cymbeline
There is in this passage nothing that much requires a note, yet I cannot forbear to push it forward into observation. The thought would probably have been more amplified, had our author lived to be shocked with such experiments as have been published in later times, by a race of men that have practised tortures without pity, and related them without shame, and are yet suffered to erect their heads among human beings.
For we are free—free to suffer every anguish of deliberation, of decisions which must be made upon suspect information and half-knowledge, every anguish of hindsight and regret, of failure, shame, and responsibility for all that we have brought upon ourselves and others: free to struggle, to starve, to demand from all one last, supreme effort to reach where we long to be and, once there, to conclude that it is not, after all, the right place.
Far off, to the east of Dow Crag and the Levers Hause, the lights of Coniston shine out in the darkness; and beyond, the lake glimmers, a mere streak of grey between invisible shores.
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 must struggle to survive in their new environment. When the starving dogs attack some sheep, they are labeled ferocious man-eating monsters, setting off a great dog hunt that is later intensified by the fear that the dogs could be carriers of the bubonic plague.
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