I felt the book turned into a let's admire the author's use of language, the turn of one more lyrical phrase (how does he do it) and the use of all those embedded stories along the way: a transition tale, a bucolic tale, a dog lover's dream story; a boy who has no voice, a dog who gives him voice. It was a wonderful idea but the story was over the top and an insult to a reader who was lured into the dynamics of the story; the foreboding, the danger, the parallels to tragic figures, the transcendence. The dogs were developed in their character; Edgar was well developed; however, the rest of the family was not explored and it left the reader burned. Because Gar, Claude and Trudy and the other characters lacked an internal development, the wild gratuitous ending which was coming and coming for 100s of pages lost all significance and was experienced as an insult to our attachments to Edgar, the dogs and our energies in reading the book to begin with.