Sarah O'Connor

“Is it some disorder of the mind that causes me to see things, hear things, that then vanish as though they never were?” (Gish 230).

Spinster Ada Byrd has just started a teaching position in Lowry Bridge, an isolated town where no one knows of her disgrace and shame from her last post. As she establishes her life in town teaching her young students naturalism in the woods around them and befriending the Reverend’s wife, Ada believes there may just be a place for her here. But Ada is starting to see some strange things: a swarm of crickets that disappears in the blink of an eye, a crow’s wing left on the schoolhouse door, and something calling her name on the wind. When she befriends an ostracized widow who the town believes is a witch, Ada is left pondering the happenings around her and is forced to look inwards for the answers, and listening close to what calls to her from the woods.

Grey Dog has been one of my most anticipated reads of this year and it didn’t disappoint. One Goodreads review described the book as a “dark and twisted Anne of Green Gables” which is a pretty great description, though after reading Gish’s acknowledgements I’d say that Ada is more Emily Byrd Starr than Anne Shirley (hell, Ada’s surname is Byrd and I’m certain that was intentional). Gish perfectly takes readers into and early 1900s Canadian smalltown, where the roles of women are restricted to either married or spinster, one a much more obviously praised choice than the other, and the annoyance of choosing to be a single woman at the time. I particularly enjoyed how Gish had Ada talk about her frustrations of being treated as a child by many of the married women around her because she wasn’t married, while also being treated as a constant teacher by being forced to read to married women around her just because she is a teacher. I also thought Ada’s ruminations on grief were very deeply felt, as well as her frustration on the roles she is expected to inhabit as a woman.

It’s a marvelously written book and Gish does an excellent job slowly weaving the horror in. It really doesn’t ramp up until the last third of the book with haunting and gruesome descriptions. But I don’t think writing it in journal entries was the right choice. The constant problem with books written this way is that few (I can’t say everyone, I haven’t read your journals) people write long direct quotes from the people they are writing about. Generally people will paraphrase, but paraphrasing doesn’t work in a novel, quotations do. I felt that had this book just been written from Ada’s perspective the same feeling could have been given, maybe with occasional journal entries. It’s still a strong novel, but aside from knowing the passing of time and the significance of the journal itself it really wasn’t needed as a device to the story.

Grey Dog is a fantastic debut that slowly pulls reader’s in to it’s horror. I can’t wait to see what Gish writes next!

Publication: April 9 2024
Publisher: ECW Press
Pages: 400 pages (Paperback)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Canadian, Horror, Historical Fiction, Queer
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:

The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd ― spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist ― accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past ― riddled with grief and shame ― has never seemed so far away.
But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something ancient and beastly ― which she calls the grey dog ― is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory begins to fail. Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, and begins to wonder which is more dangerous: the grey dog, or herself.