Point of View

The novel is written in the first person and is narrated by Chet, a one hundred pound mix- breed dog of indeterminate age. All of the action in the novel is presented as it is experienced by Chet, and Chet is present in every scene. Chet lives very much in the moment, and so while his descriptions of events that are happening to him ‘now’ are quite reliable, his memory of things that have happened in the past – even the very recent past – is often fuzzy and unclear, and so is not completely reliable. Because he is a dog Chet places a great deal of importance on things that most humans would not – particularly scents and smells – and his narration reflects this.

The novel is written using a combination of descriptive prose and dialogue. The descriptive prose consists of Chet’s observations and descriptions of...