Shakespeare's Dog: A Novel [Paperback]

Leon Rooke (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 157 pages
• Publisher: Ecco Pr (April 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880010932
• ISBN-13: 978-0880010931
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,233,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bawdy canine riot !, June 25, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shakespeare's Dog: A Novel (Paperback)

I thought this was going to be some refined story of the Bard through the eyes of his dog. Instead, I got a randy romp of domestic fights and love, told in "canine Elizebethan" form. Wow what fun ! Some of the lines Mr Hooker (Bill's dog) I still like to use. This is a fun book

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A filthy-dirty dogpile of fun!, June 27, 2005

By 

M. Tobin "bookworm" (somewhere in Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shakespeare's Dog: A Novel (Paperback)

Who would've thought to ask a dog for his opinion of love (and all related activities), especially a dog living in Elizabethan England? It's been a few years since I read this book, but I still have some fond memories of Mr. Hooker's opinions.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hurray for Hooker, June 18, 2011

By 

Kurt Steiner "stoneskipper" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shakespeare's Dog: A Novel (Paperback)

"Shakespeare's Dog" is a great book.

Hooker (the dog in question) stands among the best animal-characters in all of English literature (and far above most of its humans, too).

The book manages to be bawdy yet astute, energetic yet informative. It is comic and poignant throughout, and unabashedly Shakespearean. It's the sort of courageous venture that either fails pathetically, or else achieves its own genuine, legitimate eminence. And "Shakespeare's Dog" is NOT pathetic, people.

If English-Lit students will catch an extra joke here and there, it hardly matters -- because the book is dense, every page, with wit, and emotion, and observation. There is no shortage of sense or slight to the general reader. It even sustains some palpable doggy-angst and doggy-suspense... The sort of undiluted, straightforward narrative that a dog, with its peculiar dilemmas and way of accounting, might make of life. And Hooker's life beneath the Bard's high window is squalid, momentous, and never without drama.

This is a book by a Shakespearean academician, possessed completely by all the Gods of Dogs, and written during a week-long Spring-Break bender. If you like dogs... or Shakespeare... or both... or for godsakes neither... BUY THIS BOOK lol!