I write this review to warn readers who may be misled by other reviews. This is an updated David Copperfield without the same zing.

I don't see the point of the book, just as a chronicle of one's sufferings. At the end of all this, jill makes it big by cheating.

In my opinion, in terms of the story itself either, there has to be something clever and funny, or there should be something deep, universal and touching. Unfortunately, this book fails on both counts.

I would advice others to go back to David Copperfield or Great expectations. They are far more enjoyable.

I flew this book and felt very satisfied at the end. Ciment tells us just the right amount about her childhood to help us understand the sometimes bizarre and devious adventures she survived. Ciment did a great job, too, of throwing in appropiate historical and cultural markers. Worth reading!

I read this book in a single afternoon, devouring it. The words, visuals that Jill Ciment (sounds like concrete) uses are fantastic. So real. What a true voice. It DOES read like fiction. I had to keep remembering that this really happened to the face on the cover. A real person went through the hell that was her father and home-life. A disturbing childhood, disturbing pre-adulthood. But fabulous story. Read this one!.

Ms. Jill Ciment writes good dialogue, creates a very eccentric, quirky setting, and then populates it with some interesting players. Overall I thought the book was just an average to slightly above average read, but her style of writing surpasses the tale she tells this time around.

The setting for, "Teeth Of A Dog", is not so much a blend of cultures as the wreckage of what would be left after a variety of groups collided. With the cities, villages and the island upon which she sets her story, the population is more of an amalgam than of groups. She creates a place where the most extreme ends of the human spectrum should be set on removing the other, but they all seem to just get along either through necessity or apathy.

The couple of Helene and Thomas would be a bit odd if this had been set somewhere else. Even when the Author gives the background for the start of their relationship it's hard to tell if she is being serious or as outrageous as her island. Thomas is a renowned anthropologist whose fieldwork and studies are as clever as they are bizarre. The specific study the couple originally took together would probably make a great book in itself.

The character of Finster, an American dealing in dubious businesses through a haze of, "mariwana" is eccentric, quirky, and potentially dangerous when his hormones are guiding him. He does have his sympathetic/pathetic moments when the Author has him draw an outline of the woman he lusts after in the sand, and then has him lay next to it respectfully if not reverently.

The book begins rather uncertainly and develops until the circumstances lead to extremes that are so different from the balance of the book they read as if almost separate. Helene's reactions to the events that make her life skid toward madness on this island, that at it's best is a psychotic red light district and theme park was the strongest part of the book. As I mentioned the story was not a thrilling one, but this ladie's writing is excellent, and I look forward to reading more.

This novel has much to recommend it. I loved the language and the story. Most contemporary fiction leaves me bored and I've taken to not finishing most of the books I start. But Teeth of the Dog was different. I couldn't put it down, and even though I finished it over a week ago, I still think about it. It's been a very long time since a novel did that for me.

Teeth of the Dog is an incredible collage of social commentary and whalloping emotional content. It reads like a skillful thriller. You become so totally absorbed by the characters that you begin plotting what you would do in their situations, wanting to warn them to be a tad more reasonable or a little less passionate. What's especially well defined is the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land. Ciment's watertight prose and sensual detail drops the reader in such a vivid place, that you may check your passport to see if it's stamped "Vanduu." With a bleak humor, she shows how our American pop culture and imperialism have wreaked havoc on the unsuspecting innocent in third world counties. In Teeth of the Dog, our collective behavior has come back to bite us in the butt. I loved the character of Finster...he had perfect sleaze-appeal, the dark Adam of paradise. I also adored Ciment's other book, Half a Life, and find myself giving her books as gifts frequently. You'll want to turn everyone you know on to Jill Ciment! Warming: if you loan this book out you probably won't get it back.