But Cameron Wolfe is hungry. He's sick of being the filthy, torn, half-smiling, half-scowling underdog. He's finally met a girl. He's got words in his spirit. And now he's out to prove that there's nothing more beautiful than an underdog who's willing to stand up.

A tough but poetic street story by the acclaimed author of Fighting Ruben Wolfe.



Marianne (Australia) (2012/09/21):
When Dogs Cry is the third in the Wolfe Brothers series by Australian author, Markus Zusak. Another year has passed and the Wolfe family is in a better place: Cliff has plenty of work and Rube and Cam are working Saturdays with him; Mrs Wolfe is still working two jobs; Sarah is working hard and taking candid Polaroids in her spare time; Steve is working hard and winning weekend football; Cameron has taken to standing outside Stephanie’s place in Glebe, hoping for a glimpse of the girl who doesn’t care about him. When Rube, in his usual callous fashion, breaks up with the beautiful Octavia, Cameron is annoyed with Rube and sorry for Octavia. Until, that is, Octavia reappears with a question for him. Some of the prose is beautiful (“Soon the evening worked its way into the sky and the city hunched itself down”), but there are also instances where Zusak tries too hard and the result is woeful: “… the brief happiness left and a sadness tore me open very slowly and deliberately. City lights shone across the air, reaching their arms out to me, but I knew they’d never quite reach” (ugh!) This time the format is twenty chapters of Cameron’s narration each ending with thoughts that Cameron (the fledgling author) has started to write down. This gives the series a semi-autobiographical feel. The characters, plot and dialogue are believable but the cute dog illustrations that graced the first two stories were absent from this one, even though the dog played a large part in Cameron’s “words”. With perhaps some insight into the author’s life, this is a good taste of early Zusak.