It’s hard to say why this book went from great to mediocre for me but I know that as I neared the ending I lost interest even in the characters that I felt Diamant had built up so well in the beginning of the novel.
The story held great promise, yet I believe that the rather mundane lives that are no better or worse than anyone else’s, the lack of tying in the metaphor of the wild dogs except in rather explicit and random methods, the lack of real depth of interaction within the more dramatic events, and the all-too-neat dying off of characters to enhance the effect of a desolate community that needed to come into the more modern and social world of the city was just too expected.
While I may try another of Diamant’s works at some point, I’m not overwhelmed by the writing style as anything more than proper form and at times, amateurish. It was a brief interesting enough encounter with the people of Dogtown but not an outstanding literary event.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology