This reading group guide for DOGS includes an introduction and discussion questions. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

A singular, devastating debut novel, Dogs traces the fallout of one catastrophic night in the lives of five high school wrestlers, asking what can survive in the blast radius of latent trauma and violence.

As night falls on the city of Carbon, Hal and his friends cruise the backroads in their terrible car. From the wrestling gym to the gas station, from his mom’s kitchen to the mall parking lot, Hal bears quiet witness to the beauty and the horror he perceives in the slow, lonely world of his hometown.

Withdrawn and reticent, Hal is haunted by the specter of violence. Safety and comfort are hard-won in Carbon, a town dogged by stories of desperation and brutality, and his own home is a dark vault of troubled and unspoken memory. Hal’s greatest peace is found in the company of his dearest friend, Cody John, whose true compassion offers him a window to a better life.

Over the course of a single night, a catastrophic chain of events is set into motion. Its devastating conclusion will explode the fragile balance that once kept the boys together. Unflinching, resolute, and beautifully rendered, Dogs is a stunning exploration of trauma, real love, and the limits of our ability to reach one another.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

The book begins “What had gone wrong with me didn’t start out with the car.” Why do you think the book opens with the car, and what literal and figurative roles does the car play throughout the novel?

Consider the relationships between each of the friends. What do the power dynamics between the boys look like? What do they give to each other, and what do they take?

Discuss the different ways cycles of violence persist. How does your understanding of these cycles influence your opinion of characters who are the perpetrators and victims of violence?

Hal and his friends are on a wrestling team, though they are only depicted in practice and at wrestling meets in flashbacks. How does wrestling and what it represents appear throughout the book in other ways?

Dogs appear all over the book, literally and figuratively: stray dogs, big dogs, dogs with all bark and no bite, and more. Discuss all the ways dogs are depicted throughout the novel. What do you think they represent?

What do you think drew Cody John and Hal to each other? Discuss how their relationship morphs throughout the book. How did it begin? How did it end?

On page 132, we learn that Tough Guy bit Hal’s father: “He said that he was probably going to get Tough Guy put to sleep about it. He said that good dogs don’t bite.” Various times throughout the story, dogs are judged by how “good” or “bad” they are. If there really is such a thing as a “bad” dog, how does that change how we interpret the story? How does the notion of good and bad dogs relate to Hal and his friends?

“I wanted a powerful body,” Hal discloses on page 81. The body is a prominent theme in Dogs. How do the characters’ bodies shape their everyday lives in Carbon?

This book features a cast of tragic supporting characters: Daniel, Julia, and Styrofoam Bob, among others. Which supporting characters stood out the most to you? How do they enrich the narrative of Hal and his friends? What do they tell us about Carbon?

The Kevin Flowers incident haunts much of this book. Discuss your reactions to the revelation of the incident. What do you make of the second time Kevin and Hal meet?

On page 115, we learn more about Carbon: “The strip miners gutted the mountain a long while back. They’d wanted iron ore. They’d wanted diamonds. They didn’t ever find anything. A lot of them died for the seams of coal and copper holding out in the hard pressure of the earth.” What does this tell us about the area? How does this setting illuminate the plot?

Hal’s relationship to Julia is one that changes shape throughout the story. What does Julia mean to Hal before tragedy strikes? What does she mean to him by the end of the book?

Hal is a complex character; he’s full of love and he’s full of rage. By the end of the book, he’s treated some of the people around him, both close and not, in heinous ways. How has your perception of him changed throughout the novel? What made you want to follow his journey?

Enhance Your Book Club

As a group, talk about similar contemporary and twentieth-century novels that discuss masculinity, violence, and repressed trauma in America. How is Dogs in conversation with these texts?

Examine Carbon as a setting: its fictional history and its people according to Hal. Does this town remind you of similar towns and communities in America?

Scott Martelle’s Detroit and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville are nonfiction accounts of many of the same themes as Dogs: deindustrialization, violence, the cultural and political challenges faced by the people of a dwindling carbon city—and more. Consider reading one or both of these books with your book club, discussing their parallels with Dogs.