Walking The Dog back

"Hughes' daily walks with Dexter form the spine of [the book]. We eavesdrop on their encounters with fellow dog-walkers and on Hughes' thoughts as he plods alongside carrying a plastic bag of poo. He begins to remember moments from his past, dark memories of murder and violence. He explores his own fantasies and obsessions. From the gentle comedy of the early pages, WALKING THE DOG is transformed into something deeper and more disturbing. This will be a landmark book in the field of graphic literature. The drawing is sublime, the imagination extraordinary, the ambition unequalled."

It will be a "landmark", will it? So how come after months of publication no one has mentioned this to me in any capacity whatsoever? I only bought a copy in because it was published by Jon athan Cape who do much to insult Dr. Bryan Talbot , another of the creators on their books, in claiming that the ambition of his six-year magnum opus and indisputable masterpiece ALICE IN SUNDERLAND is not equal to this hideously ugly dog's dinner.

Rarely do I admit defeat. I'll finish any novel - prose or graphic - that I start, but here I couldn't even get started. It took me a couple of months to summon up the strength to even open the fucker and now nothing about this book's execution makes me remotely inclined to dig deeper than the first half a dozen pages whose writing scrawled in pencil is so diabolically arranged on the page and barely legible even when printed at this size that it's a chore.

"Oh, Stephen, that's the point!"

It may well be; I will never know. I've written this before, but this is supposed to be an entertainment medium not an endurance test.

An oppressively heavy and thick-set hardcover, the best use for this would be for bludgeoning to death the owners of Pit Bull Terriers.