Main Character Not Respectable

Nose Down, Eyes Up
Merrill Markoe
Villard (2008)
Hardcover, 320 pages
Rated 4 stars of 5 possible

What if you could really have a two-way conversation with your dog? No, I mean a REAL conversation, you know, where the dog can respond to you and you understand immediately what he's saying, without you having to spend hours figuring out what he means... Nose Down, Eyes Up by Merrill Markoe takes that premise and runs with it, straight into the funniest novel I've read this year.

When Gil discovers that he can understand what his dog is telling the other dogs, he tries to develop the dog, Jimmy, and his advice into a marketable commodity via the internet.

While the premise of this novel is good and the story pretty funny, there were also times I wanted to hit Gil on the head... He was pretty stupid to be getting involved with his ex-wife after she had gotten married to someone else, plus, the way he treated his girl friend kept me from being able to respect him as an honorable person... These things, along with the fact that some of Gil's personal life seemed to have little or nothing to contribute to the story kept me from giving this novel the full five stars.

Nevertheless, read this novel if you want some laughs, but only if you can tolerate some stupidity in the main character.  This review has simultaneously been posted on Dragon Views, LibraryThing and Amazon.com.