Fifteen Dogs

This book keeps showing up on book prize lists, so I figured there's gotta be something good about it. I knew I was going to like it at least a little, since it's basically an AI story - dogs gain consciousness through divine intervention. It felt like a spin-off of [b:Mort e 22181034 Mort e Robert Repino https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1416178734s/22181034.jpg 41529181] actually, in a non-apocalyptic setting. 15 dogs suddenly find themselves with a new awareness of the world, and I found myself hoping desperately for their happiness. This has come about because of a bet between Apollo and Hermes, who've wagered a year of servitude against the happiness or lack thereof of the dogs at the time of their death (so, yes, dogs die in this book - keep that in mind if you're sensitive about this!). There's some goddish bickering in the background of the story that affects the lives of the dogs in different ways, but really it's about how the dogs deal with knowing. They quickly create a new language among themselves, and some embrace it quickly by creating puns and poetry, while others try to cling to their essential “dogness”, whatever that is, and struggle to reconcile what they see as their fundamental being with a new-found intelligence and knowledge. But they're different...they don't fit in the human world, but not in the dog world either. I can't help but call the gods' wager unfair, as they've created self-aware outcasts and expect to compare their level of unhappiness with humans who were born into a world expecting their self-awareness. How happy can you be to suddenly know the extent to which humans condescend to you? But it's only condescending if you have the knowledge to understand why. Baby talk is condescending to adults but for babies it's perfectly acceptable (and helps them understand language faster). Is it fair to be angry that someone spoke to you in a way you perceive as condescending if it wouldn't have been condescending before you could perceive condescension? And if the someone isn't aware that you can perceive condescension now? That was kind of confusing but the dogs weren't really thinking too much about how humans see regular dogs. They did a lot of reacting, and the nature of their reactions were different from before, and it scared and intrigued them. Anyway, I liked this book. I hope it wins one of the awards it was nominated for.