The Boy and the Dog: A Novel
By: Seishu Hase / Translated By: Alison Watts / Narrated By: Akie Kotabe
Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
Okaaaay… What. The. HECK! did I just listen to…?
Ahhhh jeez! I was suckered in by the absolutely adorable cover pic. I was taken in by the Publisher’s Summary. -AND- I was remembering how specTACular The Travelling Cat Chronicles was. You know, that heartrending story of an animal touching the many lives of the humans he crossed, inspiring questions, inspiring the most beautiful answers.
That’s what The Boy and the Dog was s’posed to be about.
Dude! I dunno where to start with how totally NOT THAT it turned out to be.
First! Let me, posthaste! warn you about the content. The cover is all cutesy, and ‘twould appear that p’raps you might be able to listen to this with your own kids. Oh nooooo!!! Do NOT do that. Every single individual this “heroic” dog comes across is a low-life. I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW! Every human is worthy of dignity (…uhm… kinda…), and every human is worthy of a chance at redemption. BUT! when they kill and rob. And they think oh so graphically of the sex acts they’re about to do? THAT, my fellow accomplice, means this ain’t a book you want your kids listening to.
This is probably not a book YOU want to listen to. Unless you’re into that, and more power to ya, but personally? 6 freaking hours of my life I can’t get back…
One can’t help but wonder if narrator Akie Kotabe phoned this in (It’s an exceedingly choppy delivery), or if he, quite simply, didn’t have much to work with. The writing is not only hackneyed, but it’s also of a stutter-stop nature. So was Kotabe just making do with the text, reading choppy sentences, or was he in over his head and giving a flawed performance? Further, some of the word choices were jarring and questionable, so I’m wondering how… flawed… the translation was.
But this was just spectacularly horrific. From the get-go, through to the varied, but scummy, people who save the dog (ALWAYS found wounded and malnourished in the mountains), all the way to the sappy ending that somehow managed to be dry and abrupt. And soooo sickly syrupy.
At this point, my friend, I know that this, The Boy and the Dog, will be the final review in our newsletter for this month. Generally, we begin our newsletter with Fave Listens, and then I juggle >MEH< with >YAY< reviews, hoping to finish the newsletter with a >HUZZAH<…
…that ain’t happening this month…
Rather, I leave y’all with this: A truly heartfelt and URGENT Warning!
Park 6-hours of your Life by the door, and don’t weep when you realize you’ve thrown them away -IF- you do indeed decide to give this audiobook a Go, no matter what I’ve said. But, pleeeeease! I beg of you! Listen to this month’s Faves instead.
Delight yourself, enrich your Life. Be happy.
And stay the heck away from this wretched Wretched WRETCHED dreck and drivel, these itty bitty Life Wanderings, these Experiences where the Dog is simply a literary device, not much of a character at all, there by happenstance, and obVIOUSly a harbinger of Dooooom!
Run! Run like the wind!!!
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