One of the things we are dealing with in [The Plague Dogs] is a prolonged and minutely detailed metaphor. In their tortuous, six-week odyssey from the Buchenwald atmosphere of ARSE to a rather contrived happy ending, Snitter and Rowf move through some literary territory as mountainous as the craggy English countryside (beloved of all Wordsworthians) that is their geographical setting. Clearly, they are canine shadows of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but they are also echoes of Didi and Gogo in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, objects of total helplessness, playing willy-nilly a game whose rules they have not been taught. Then there are Snitter's insane monologues as he reels across the desolate landscape; the situation could be stolen from King Lear. Even the deus ex machina ending, which violates the structural principles of realistic fiction but gives the reader emotional satisfaction, is introduced with a flourish, the author...