What do you think?
Rate this book
The Dogs
Michael Shamanov grapples with the idea of his mother's life and her desire to finish it. Perhaps it's her life he has been running away from and not his own.
'The story of a life is a secret as life itself. A life that can be explained is no life at all.' Elias Canetti
Is it possible to write about the living without imagining them dead?
Michael Shamanov is a man running away from life's responsibilities. His marriage is over, he barely sees his son and he hasn't seen his mother since banishing her to a nursing home two years earlier. A successful screen writer, Michael's encounter with his mother's nurse leads him to discover that the greatest story he's never heard may lie with his dying mother. And perhaps it's her life he's been running away from and not his own. Is the past ever finished? Should we respect another's silence? And if so, is it ever possible to understand and put to rest the strange idea of family that travels through the flesh?
From the Miles Franklin shortlisted author of No One comes a haunting gem of family secrets and impossible decisions.
'The story of a life is a secret as life itself. A life that can be explained is no life at all.' Elias Canetti
Is it possible to write about the living without imagining them dead?
Michael Shamanov is a man running away from life's responsibilities. His marriage is over, he barely sees his son and he hasn't seen his mother since banishing her to a nursing home two years earlier. A successful screen writer, Michael's encounter with his mother's nurse leads him to discover that the greatest story he's never heard may lie with his dying mother. And perhaps it's her life he's been running away from and not his own. Is the past ever finished? Should we respect another's silence? And if so, is it ever possible to understand and put to rest the strange idea of family that travels through the flesh?
From the Miles Franklin shortlisted author of No One comes a haunting gem of family secrets and impossible decisions.
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
4 people are currently reading
123 people want to read
About the author
John Hughes
18 books50 followersJohn Hughes, Jr. was an American film director, producer and writer. He made some of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s, including National Lampoon's Vacation; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Weird Science; The Breakfast Club; Some Kind of Wonderful; Sixteen Candles; Pretty in Pink; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Hughes is best known for his pioneering romantic comedies that featured realistic portrayals of teenagers, most of which were set and filmed in the Chicago area (where Hughes lived for most of his life).
Hughes is best known for his pioneering romantic comedies that featured realistic portrayals of teenagers, most of which were set and filmed in the Chicago area (where Hughes lived for most of his life).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
June 17, 2022
One star is one star more than this piece of plagiarism deserves. Lifting passages from The Great Gatsby, All Quiet On the Western Front, and Anna Karenina and presenting them as your own work is truly despicable. And the only excuse that the author was able to come up with, was that others had done it too.
June 20, 2022
This was going to be another read in the Miles Franklin Literary Aware long list, but this book has been removed from the list. Why? For allegations of plagiarism. I agree with commentary that the allegations won't matter to the general public. You'll still read the book if you want to, and either like or dislike the story. I read the novel prior to hearing of the allegations.
Even before this came to light, I was going to rate this 1 star. I did not enjoy this book at all. I found it a load of boring and pretentious twaddle, if I'm really honest. To me, this book is basically trying to take a taboo subject such an euthanasia and stitch it into a story that really has little substance. This, for me, is a novel where I didn't enjoy one character. I found each of them insufferable for the majority of this novel.
Also, the story just didn't have that ring of believability. Where the author tries to add depth into the characters, I found it difficult to feel that depth. And character growth? I didn't feel that either.
There's some small positives in the backstory of the dying mother. But that's a very minor part of this book, and it honestly didn't seem to impact the conclusion. It's a good bit of character history, without much bearing on the overall story.
I don't have an overall opinion on whether it should have been removed from the long list or not. That's up for others to decide. I don't think it would have won.
Even before this came to light, I was going to rate this 1 star. I did not enjoy this book at all. I found it a load of boring and pretentious twaddle, if I'm really honest. To me, this book is basically trying to take a taboo subject such an euthanasia and stitch it into a story that really has little substance. This, for me, is a novel where I didn't enjoy one character. I found each of them insufferable for the majority of this novel.
Also, the story just didn't have that ring of believability. Where the author tries to add depth into the characters, I found it difficult to feel that depth. And character growth? I didn't feel that either.
There's some small positives in the backstory of the dying mother. But that's a very minor part of this book, and it honestly didn't seem to impact the conclusion. It's a good bit of character history, without much bearing on the overall story.
I don't have an overall opinion on whether it should have been removed from the long list or not. That's up for others to decide. I don't think it would have won.
July 18, 2022
Not even clever plagiarism.
https://lithub.com/australian-novelis...
https://lithub.com/australian-novelis...
December 6, 2022
I never enjoy reading books by plagiarists, particularly ones who steal the words of female authors (without attribution) such as "Ukraine-born [Anna] Alexievich...a Belarusian journalist" who have done extensive research collecting the stories of people who suffered trauma from World War II.
There's more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia...
There's more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia...
November 11, 2024
What a solipsistic wank. May have started out planned as "the great Australian novel" but the execution is just a bad Newxastle tale.
John Hughes ; if you're going to masturbate have the decency to do it in private.
John Hughes ; if you're going to masturbate have the decency to do it in private.
August 30, 2022
Needs a good edit
January 1, 2022
When I consulted Tom Chetwynd's Dictionary of Symbols to unravel the symbolism in the title of John Hughes new novel The Dogs, this is what I found:
From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, I found the common allusion to Shakespeare's horrors of war:
and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's quatrain about the superstitious belief that dogs howl at death:
As you can see from the blurb, all these meanings surface in the terrain explored in the novel:
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/09/26/t...
Dogs/Wolves/Jackals
The animal instincts as helpful intermediaries between man and nature; or as negative aggression.
Dogs help man hunt the wild animal and round up the domestic animal: So they are symbols of the right inner relationship between man and his animal nature.
Their good nose for scenting unseen prey, or intruders: Intuition, which is aware of other people's inner nature, sense when something is wrong, and is not easily deceived by others. (Dictionary of Symbols, by Tom Chetwynd, Paladin, (Grafton, Collins) 1982 ISBN 9780586083512, p.124)
The negative entries about the symbolism of 'dogs' include: male aggression, or to represent the masculine aggression of the Animus in women; associated with the underworld and death via forces which hunt and hound the conscious Ego and tear it to pieces from the depths of the unconscious.
From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, I found the common allusion to Shakespeare's horrors of war:
Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III, i (1599) (Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p386)
and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's quatrain about the superstitious belief that dogs howl at death:
In the Rabbinical Book, it saith
The dogs howl, when with icy breath
Great Sammaël, the Angel of Death
Takes through the town his flight! (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Golden Legend III, vii (1851), ibid p.385
As you can see from the blurb, all these meanings surface in the terrain explored in the novel:
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/09/26/t...
Read
October 2, 2023Location 410
In that brief assessment I had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her features, and knew at once what drew my mother to her. It was as if some surplus so overflowed her it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile.
Location 464
You have to admire their entrepreneurial spirt.
Location 1251
desuetude
Location 1336
In that brief glance he had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face, and the imperceptible smile that curved her red lips and was for him alone.
Location 1375
residuum
Location 1472
I remember a boy being led out to execution. In his eyes you could see that he didn’t believe it, until the last moment he didn’t believe it. He stood facing the guns. At the last moment he covered his face with his hands
Location 1911
She smiled at me then, one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it that you might come across once in your life, if you were lucky. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
Location 2009
squadra
Location 2009
Berettas,
Location 2024
Someone betrayed us … The Germans found the camp. We were saved by the swamps. For days we stood up to our necks. Mud and water. The baby was hungry … it didn’t know … the Germans were close … we could hear the dogs. If the dogs heard it …? How old was I? I had no milk. I was hungry too. There were thirty of us … No one could look at me … No one … You understand …
Location 2065
She saw a man carried off with his back torn open, the lung throbbing through the wound. She saw men go on living with the top of their skulls missing. She saw soldiers go on running when both their feet had been shot away. One man crawled for a full half-mile on his hands, dragging his legs behind him, both knees shattered. Another made it to a dressing station with his guts spilling over his hands as he held them in. She saw soldiers with their mouths missing, with their lower jaws missing, with their faces missing; she saw a man who had gripped the main artery in his arm between his teeth so he didn’t bleed to death. Sometimes she’d join the orderlies in the ambulance.
Location 2121
Leo Szilard conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction.
Location 2124
The United States and Great Britain refused to accept any more Jewish refugees.
Location 2148
They say here that every bullet flies in from the future.
Location 2200
I remember following you to the station, wearing the hat you made me wear because of the sun, the flock of blackbirds that you said was like a hole in the sky. I remember your long shadow falling on the walls, because you always walked close to the wall. Such a pale, silent, withdrawn Mama. When I asked you if you preferred to sit by the window on the train you said, What difference does it make?
Location 2209
Remember him? The youth leader?
Location 2238
as impressionist as a Degas racetrack
Location 2291
hypogeal
Location 2391
To answer cruelty with love.
Location 2502
Apart from alcohol, nothing loosens a person’s tongue as efficiently as walking. It should be number one in every torturer’s handbook.
Location 2544
happy families when there’s no happiness
Location 2624
the web outlives the spider?
Location 2632
How he raced out through the door and came back moments later, mute and sobbing. I made a big show of looking out the window. It must have jumped the fence, I told him.
Location 2967
Above us, pens dipped in blue-black ink, Pacific swifts (on winter sabbatical from Siberia!) write their signatures on the sky and blink their wings.
Location 2988
happy family
Location 3017
All babies are the same, Leo.
Location 3067
you sat there perfectly still, you didn’t flinch or say a word, you just wept the biggest silent tears I’ve ever seen that rolled down your cheeks until it was finished. Poor Rino, the look on his face …’
Location 3085
It grows a new, subordinate’s brain.
Location 3313
(to paraphrase Clausewitz, talk was the continuation of sex by other means),
Location 3351
‘If, before I was born, you’d handed the tale of my life to me and invited me to live it, wouldn’t I have turned you down flat?’
Location 3356
And he just looks at me as if I’m the man who fell to earth and gets up and goes to the bathroom. It
Location 3684
‘Because we were born by chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we have never been; because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts. When it’s extinguished, the body will turn to ashes, and the spirit will dissolve like empty air. Our name will be forgotten and no one will remember our works; our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and be scattered like mist that is chased by the rays of the sun …’
Location 3707
‘I never told you this, but for a long time when I was little, I had to divide the world into two categories: the living and the sleeping. Everything that moved was alive, and when it stopped, that was sleep. I got to know the heavy sleepers pretty fast. The garbage bin slept for a week. It took me so long to recognise the border where life ended because the cupboards and tables and chairs lived in a near perpetual state of motion. At the time I had no idea of the truth: that while I slept, your Nonna was roaming the house shifting everything. I spent hours waiting to see the movement for myself. In those years I grew up believing that people lived during the day, and while they slept, the furniture wandered the house in their place. Sometimes even I would wake up somewhere else. In the kitchen or the lounge room or the front of the house, and once even in the laundry. It was crazy and confusing, but over time I got used to it. I gave up trying to see the movement for myself, happy to believe in furniture as I believed in dinosaurs. I could go to bed in one place and never know where I might be in the morning. But here’s the thing …’
Location 3745
that the dead don’t annex the living, who become the continuers of their interrupted life
Location 3830
you’ve-only-got-two-grandmothers-so-use-them-wisely
In that brief assessment I had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her features, and knew at once what drew my mother to her. It was as if some surplus so overflowed her it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile.
Location 464
You have to admire their entrepreneurial spirt.
Location 1251
desuetude
Location 1336
In that brief glance he had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face, and the imperceptible smile that curved her red lips and was for him alone.
Location 1375
residuum
Location 1472
I remember a boy being led out to execution. In his eyes you could see that he didn’t believe it, until the last moment he didn’t believe it. He stood facing the guns. At the last moment he covered his face with his hands
Location 1911
She smiled at me then, one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it that you might come across once in your life, if you were lucky. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
Location 2009
squadra
Location 2009
Berettas,
Location 2024
Someone betrayed us … The Germans found the camp. We were saved by the swamps. For days we stood up to our necks. Mud and water. The baby was hungry … it didn’t know … the Germans were close … we could hear the dogs. If the dogs heard it …? How old was I? I had no milk. I was hungry too. There were thirty of us … No one could look at me … No one … You understand …
Location 2065
She saw a man carried off with his back torn open, the lung throbbing through the wound. She saw men go on living with the top of their skulls missing. She saw soldiers go on running when both their feet had been shot away. One man crawled for a full half-mile on his hands, dragging his legs behind him, both knees shattered. Another made it to a dressing station with his guts spilling over his hands as he held them in. She saw soldiers with their mouths missing, with their lower jaws missing, with their faces missing; she saw a man who had gripped the main artery in his arm between his teeth so he didn’t bleed to death. Sometimes she’d join the orderlies in the ambulance.
Location 2121
Leo Szilard conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction.
Location 2124
The United States and Great Britain refused to accept any more Jewish refugees.
Location 2148
They say here that every bullet flies in from the future.
Location 2200
I remember following you to the station, wearing the hat you made me wear because of the sun, the flock of blackbirds that you said was like a hole in the sky. I remember your long shadow falling on the walls, because you always walked close to the wall. Such a pale, silent, withdrawn Mama. When I asked you if you preferred to sit by the window on the train you said, What difference does it make?
Location 2209
Remember him? The youth leader?
Location 2238
as impressionist as a Degas racetrack
Location 2291
hypogeal
Location 2391
To answer cruelty with love.
Location 2502
Apart from alcohol, nothing loosens a person’s tongue as efficiently as walking. It should be number one in every torturer’s handbook.
Location 2544
happy families when there’s no happiness
Location 2624
the web outlives the spider?
Location 2632
How he raced out through the door and came back moments later, mute and sobbing. I made a big show of looking out the window. It must have jumped the fence, I told him.
Location 2967
Above us, pens dipped in blue-black ink, Pacific swifts (on winter sabbatical from Siberia!) write their signatures on the sky and blink their wings.
Location 2988
happy family
Location 3017
All babies are the same, Leo.
Location 3067
you sat there perfectly still, you didn’t flinch or say a word, you just wept the biggest silent tears I’ve ever seen that rolled down your cheeks until it was finished. Poor Rino, the look on his face …’
Location 3085
It grows a new, subordinate’s brain.
Location 3313
(to paraphrase Clausewitz, talk was the continuation of sex by other means),
Location 3351
‘If, before I was born, you’d handed the tale of my life to me and invited me to live it, wouldn’t I have turned you down flat?’
Location 3356
And he just looks at me as if I’m the man who fell to earth and gets up and goes to the bathroom. It
Location 3684
‘Because we were born by chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we have never been; because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts. When it’s extinguished, the body will turn to ashes, and the spirit will dissolve like empty air. Our name will be forgotten and no one will remember our works; our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and be scattered like mist that is chased by the rays of the sun …’
Location 3707
‘I never told you this, but for a long time when I was little, I had to divide the world into two categories: the living and the sleeping. Everything that moved was alive, and when it stopped, that was sleep. I got to know the heavy sleepers pretty fast. The garbage bin slept for a week. It took me so long to recognise the border where life ended because the cupboards and tables and chairs lived in a near perpetual state of motion. At the time I had no idea of the truth: that while I slept, your Nonna was roaming the house shifting everything. I spent hours waiting to see the movement for myself. In those years I grew up believing that people lived during the day, and while they slept, the furniture wandered the house in their place. Sometimes even I would wake up somewhere else. In the kitchen or the lounge room or the front of the house, and once even in the laundry. It was crazy and confusing, but over time I got used to it. I gave up trying to see the movement for myself, happy to believe in furniture as I believed in dinosaurs. I could go to bed in one place and never know where I might be in the morning. But here’s the thing …’
Location 3745
that the dead don’t annex the living, who become the continuers of their interrupted life
Location 3830
you’ve-only-got-two-grandmothers-so-use-them-wisely
September 13, 2023
The wording and the phrasing and the analogies, writing were at times excellent - but the protagonist was TOO introspective, and his incessant whinging meant that the book was a struggle to finish. The descriptions of his mother's symptoms of dementia were an accurate depiction of this reality for many people. The theme of assisted dying is timely but the author did not explore the legalities for NSW - where voluntary assisted dying is yet to come into effect. This could have been handled from the angle that the protagonist is an author and researched other things across the novel. The potential repercussions for those who were to administer a lethal cocktail were not addressed beyond having the drugs in their possession when being pulled over by the cops for something else.
The book had an interesting layout as to where the 'climax' was placed.
The writing language was so good, and the feel of Australia in cities like Newcastle and the Gold Coast were accurate so I am curious to try another of this author's - but I did not give more stars as I hesitate to recommend it to other readers.
Addendum - well I guess the writing was so good because.... https://lithub.com/australian-novelis...
The book had an interesting layout as to where the 'climax' was placed.
The writing language was so good, and the feel of Australia in cities like Newcastle and the Gold Coast were accurate so I am curious to try another of this author's - but I did not give more stars as I hesitate to recommend it to other readers.
Addendum - well I guess the writing was so good because.... https://lithub.com/australian-novelis...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 17, 2021
A book full of quotable sentences I need to read it again. The parallel broken relationships over 3 generation, woven together through memoirs and imagination with the present. The struggle between morality, shame, deception and truth in every generation and every character, regret seems inevitable regardless of war or peace, prosperity or poverty. Life has gone to the dogs, forget about it!
November 11, 2023
Wow - wonderfully written & a story that builds well. Themes of family & death. A book that forces you to think about events in your own life - how well you really know someone & why they act like they do. Beautiful & contemplative.
April 15, 2023
I didn't realise this was "the plagiarism book" when I borrowed it. Now I don't know how much my dislike of this story of a horrible man doing horrible things is coloured by the knowledge that so many parts were actually written by others.
August 6, 2023
DNF'd. Has this man heard of Turnitin?
September 26, 2022
I remember enjoying this book but it has been a while. I'll try to construct from my flawed memory an idea of the story and my feeling about it.
Stories of disconnect between mothers and children are common - and I always find it interesting to see where the journey goes.
Adult children with a disconnect to the mother, often feel disenfranchised.
In this story, Michael does only what he has to do in his role as son. He's clearly not been a happy chap. It is only when he really has to deal with his mother, who he 'left' in a home two years ago and starts a relationship with one of her carers that he begins to grow (I feel).
Discovered letters reveal a history he knew nothing about, his mother's history and it all begins to make sense.
He becomes reconciled and it helps his relationship with his grown son Leo (who I love).
Personally this story reminded me of the strong sense of frustration I have at people who cry at funerals and regret what they didn't say or do, how they should have said how they feel before, 'oh, I wish I'd seen them more often'.
It is up to you. If you are prepared to let things go in a relationship - sisters, parents, etc then be prepared for the end when you can't go back and apologise or seek answers. If you don't want that to be the way it ends, do something about it now.
Stories of disconnect between mothers and children are common - and I always find it interesting to see where the journey goes.
Adult children with a disconnect to the mother, often feel disenfranchised.
In this story, Michael does only what he has to do in his role as son. He's clearly not been a happy chap. It is only when he really has to deal with his mother, who he 'left' in a home two years ago and starts a relationship with one of her carers that he begins to grow (I feel).
Discovered letters reveal a history he knew nothing about, his mother's history and it all begins to make sense.
He becomes reconciled and it helps his relationship with his grown son Leo (who I love).
Personally this story reminded me of the strong sense of frustration I have at people who cry at funerals and regret what they didn't say or do, how they should have said how they feel before, 'oh, I wish I'd seen them more often'.
It is up to you. If you are prepared to let things go in a relationship - sisters, parents, etc then be prepared for the end when you can't go back and apologise or seek answers. If you don't want that to be the way it ends, do something about it now.
December 2, 2021
A poignant, well told story with rich characters. Michael has been avoiding things a lot in his life, his mum, his son, his ex-wife. 2 years after his mum goes into a nursing home he decides to finally stop avoiding things and reconnect with her. In doing so he finally opens himself up to love and a well of emotions. A thought provoking read that leaves you pondering how far you would go for someone you loved. ⭐⭐⭐#thedogs #johnhughes #tea_sipping_bookworm #goodreads #litsy #thestorygraph #amazonkindle #bookqueen #bookstagram
April 12, 2023
Between the pages of this book are glimpses of true literary genius. It is a pity that most of this is others' genius without proper credit given. Had the author marketed the book as a kind of pastiche or meta-examination of narrative voice and the derivative nature of art, I would likely have been more charitable in my rating. The overall piece provides a fascinating meditation on
memory, story-telling and fractured parent-child relationships. At times, however, the pace seemed to drag, making it, even on its own merits, a hard read.
memory, story-telling and fractured parent-child relationships. At times, however, the pace seemed to drag, making it, even on its own merits, a hard read.
December 29, 2022
The only thing that featured more commonly than parentheses (better known as brackets) in this book were plagiarised passages (apparently). Had its moments (but also had paragraphs you could easily skim over), while also being a jumbled mess at other times (much like this review). The son (Leo) was perhaps (jury is out though) the only likable character.
Read
February 28, 2023I haven't read this book and I don't intend to. I hadn't heard of this author until the shit hit the fan regarding his stupendous plagiarism. They say any publicity is good publicity, but in this case no, just no. By rights, the remaining unsold copies of this ought to be pulped (and there will be lots - pity the poor publisher). It may become a collector's item but for all the wrong reasons.
July 18, 2022
No, no, no. Did not enjoy or even like this book. Protagonist a decidedly unlike able character, and story line dragged on. I was uncomfortable with the ending as I couldn’t help feeling it was totally illegal.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
February 28, 2022DNF
March 15, 2023
Shame about the plagiarism.
January 6, 2026
About a son’s struggle with euthanasia. 3 generations mother had to kill own daughter to save a camp during the war. Moving
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews