Minutes March Book: Dog Boy by Eva Hornung

Dog Boy

by Eva Hornung

(chosen by Elster)







Elster chose this book based on a recommendation from a friend, given while they were both walking their dogs. At that point she was finding it hard to choose a book, and her friend's recommendation was so strong she thought she'd take a chance on it.

Eva Hornung (previously known as Eva Sallis) was born in Bendigo and now lives in Adelaide. She is an award-winning writer of literary fiction and criticism: her first novel Hiam won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1997 and the Nita May Dobbie Award in 1999. Her novel The Marsh Birds won the Asher Literary Award 2005 and was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Age Book of the Year 2005, NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

She was raised in the Adelaide hills with her eight siblings, and her parents kept them on a strict routine of home schooling and creative pursuits. They painted and sculpted each morning, and participated in the family's two string quartets. Eva has studied, and is fluent in, many languages, including Russian which she learnt while researching this book.


(general biographical details from the publisher, and an article in The Age.)


What the publisher says about this book:

Abandoned in a big city at the onset of winter, a hungry four-year-old boy follows a stray dog to her lair. There in the rich smelly darkness, in the rub of hair, claws and teeth, he joins four puppies suckling at their mother’s teats. And so begins Romochka’s life as a dog.

Weak and hairless, with his useless nose and blunt little teeth, Romochka is ashamed of what a poor dog he makes. But learning how to be something else…that’s a skill a human can master. Fortunately–because one day Romochka will have to learn how to be a boy.

The story of the child raised by beasts is timeless. But in Dog Boy Eva Hornung has created such a vivid and original telling, so viscerally convincing, that it becomes not just new but definitive:

Yes, this is how it would be.

What we discussed about the book:

• In what ways did Hornung create an authentic "Russian" voice for this book? 
• How did she represent the bleak, cold nature of the landscape?
• Who was the 'Uncle' - what was his true role? Why did he abandon Romochka?
• How do we learn to be 'human'? Can this be taught by animals?
• What is the distinction between animal and human society - is the creation and appreciation of culture a major difference?
• Was Romochka creating culture in collecting feathers, skulls etc and arranging them within the lair?
• How were we affected by our reading of the suckling scenes? Were we disturbed by the recognition of this primal nature?
• How effectively Hornung appealled to all the senses in the reading of this book. Was it a particularly smelly book?
• At what point in the book did we fully engage with the narrative? (For many it was Part 2)  How was the detailed description of dog life in the lair in Part 1 necessary to the set-up of the plot?
• In what ways did Romochka keep in touch with language while living with the dogs (listening to others, repeating phrases, memories)?
• How did Romochka establish his position as the alpha dog?  Was he a protector, or protected?
• Why did Momochka bring Puppy back to the lair?
• Were we shocked by the ending? Was it a necessary rite of passage for him to pass into the human world?

And then we were sidetracked into:

• In what ways does living within a corrupt system change the nature of ordinary people?  
• The benefits of exposure to multiple languages as a young child - how does that create the neural pathways for future language development?
• How dogs will modify their behaviour by watching humans, and how domesticated dogs will defer to their owners.
• The condition of hypertrichosis - development of excessive body hair.
• Do dogs focus on the same eye as humans when looking at a face?
• Special skills that dogs have - the research being done into their ability to 'smell' cancer in humans, the dog in the US that chewed off its diabetic owners gangrenous toes thereby saving his life.

In other news:

• We discussed the work of drug and alcohol educators in schools. What are/aren't effective ways to teach teenagers the necessarily skills to make good judgements?

Ratings:
Range: 6 to 9
Average: 7.67

Next book: The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (chosen by Fairlie)