When I was younger, around about ten years old, I was obsessed with books where the main character was an animal. Babe had just come out in the cinemas and so our school had bought every Dick King-Smith book in existence (and at that time, he had written around eighty novels, most concerned with animals). I had flown through them with such gusto that I barely remember them now. I know that one involved a mouse whose husband died on her first birthday. I also remember that the novel that Babe is based on is, confusingly, named The Sheep-Pig.
As time went on, I stopped reading about animals. They were very hard to understand and although I learnt a lot of interesting facts about them (birds don’t really use their sense of smell or taste), I just wasn’t interested enough in animals as characters. Also, I found an awesome book on Greek mythology at around the same time and read that instead. There was a little toerag in my class who told the teacher I was looking at the naked pictures inside and I got in trouble.
When I picked up A Lab Report, I expected that it would contain much the same content that King-Smith had given me when I was a child: a story from an animal’s perspective that rarely featured humans and had animals acting quite unlike you’d expect them to act. In a way, I was right: A Lab Report is a story from an animal’s perspective, but humans are featured throughout (and play a vital role within the story) while the animals act like animals.
A Lab Report is a series of episodes in the life of Rosie, a black Labrador puppy, who is adopted by Amy and Rob and brought to live in their home near Edinburgh, Scotland. Amy and Rob already have two other dogs, Coco and Brambles, and the first few episodes deal with Rosie slowly easing into her life as the baby in her new family. Rosie is not the most humble of narrators and a lot of the comedy in the book comes from her cockiness and self-aware nature. In fact, the role she plays is very much like the toys in Toy Story or the babies in Rugrats – she knows more than she lets on and prefers to play to people’s assumptions that she is “a daft wee lassie” (as my boss occasionally says). She regularly causes havoc in order to complete her objectives and revels in torturing her humans.
The episodes follow two years in her life and move about the place, snapping forward and backward in time as Rosie relates stories to the reader, often allowing herself to get sidetracked for the sake of entertainment. Although she is often shown as a level-headed character, her hubris does occasionally get her into scrapes and one particular adventure near the end of the book is incredibly interesting to read as Rosie is completely unaware of the situation she is put in, though the reader is. A lot of this dramatic irony is played out through Rob and Amy, her humans. In the most poignant chapter of the book, Rosie cannot grasp the complex emotions that are being shown through Rob and Amy and is left to describe the scene in confusion, asking questions that are left unanswered.
Though the episodes do not form a plot of sorts, we do see a realistic and entertaining character study emerge. Rob and Amy are like any other couple – they laugh and love and argue and although we only see them in relation to self-centred Rosie, there are snippets of their lives away from their dogs. Likewise, Coco and Brambles do not share Rosie’s ability to converse with the reader, but still have distinct personalities and idiosyncrasies. Even Rosie seems to evolve, though it is difficult to see as she considers herself to be the pinnacle of canine evolution from the outset.
A Lab Report is an entertaining and interesting novel which I would suggest reading in as few sittings as possible to fully enjoy the episodic nature.
I give this wonderful book five Labradors out of five.
Espressopinions 