Rebecca Brown (2) (1956–)

THE DOGS: A MODERN BESTIARY - Hmm ... Weird. I'm kind of at a loss as to what to say about this book. Compelling? Well yeah, kinda. See, it's this nameless narrator who lives alone in a tiny apartment and this dog, probably a Doberman, shows up and she takes it in. She seems to be afraid of it at first, then finds it beautiful, begins to love it. Then more dogs show up, probably all Dobermans, that's not really clear. The dogs take over - not just her apartment, but her life, which she actually begins to fear for. Oh, and here's another thing, pretty important: it seems no one else can see the dogs, just her. It gets more complicated, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might read it and enjoy it a lot more than I did. Oh, and the narrator seems to be a lesbian, since she brings another woman home from a bar. All told, there are 25 short chapters here, and they're all pretty interesting and certainly well-written. I mean I kept on reading. Can't believe I read the whole thing. But I did. And I'm still scratching my head. The book is just so surrealistic, often like a twisted fairy tale - spooky, chilling. Towards the end, things happen that made me wonder if the narrator had perhaps been physically and sexually abused - maybe even tortured - as a child. The dogs? They don't seem real. But they stand for something, I'm pretty sure. Well, actually I'm not sure, but ... Bottom line? Rebecca Brown is a pretty damn good writer. She kept things moving forward, even when I wondered what the hell was she trying to say here. I didn't hate the book, but I didn't love it either. I'm glad I read it, but I'm also glad I'm done with it. Does that make sense?

The thing is I bought this book because I thought it was about dogs. But it's not, not really. In fact I might have to remove it from the shelf where my 'dog book' collection resides. But where to put it?

Hmm. Weird.… (meer)