The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary [Paperback]

Rebecca Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

The nameless narrator of The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary lives in her studio apartment with a pack of Doberman pinchers. The dogs, led by the cruel, charismatic bitch named Miss Dog, alternate between being brutal attack animals and loyal companions, being real and otherworldly. Some chapters draw upon the ecstatic and horrifying visions of Christian mystics; others take place in the landscapes of familiar fairytales; others in the banal settings of the late-night pick-up bars or suburban picnics. The narrator uneasily inhabits these worlds until the dogs force her to take irrevocable action. Rebecca Brown is the author of other fictions, including The Terrible Girls, Annie Oakley’s Girl, and The Gifts of the Body. She lives in Seattle.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The many devotees of Rebecca Brown's compressed, lyrical prose will find The Dogs her most accomplished piece of fiction yet--a taut, beautifully sustained meditation on power, savagery, and piercing self-knowledge. Whether drawing on fairy tales, medieval Christian allegories, or the conceit of the bestiary (her precursors are Robert Coover, Angela Carter, and other wordsmiths of the fantastic), Brown manages to turn a wealth of allusions and images to her own grim purposes. Do a pack of cruel, increasingly human Dobermans inhabit the narrator's modest studio apartment, forcing her to do their bidding? And, if so, why doesn't she leave? What has happened to her self-esteem--or, in fact, to herself, her fragile body, with its pale, hairless paws, its two measly teats (so annoying, so ridiculous to the dogs), its useless teeth? A breakthrough novel for Brown that should attract--and disturb--a wide readership. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

Brown (Annie Oakley's Girl) never contents herself, or reassures her readers, by resorting to realist conventions. In her latest effort, a snarling attack on the fairy-tale form, a good girl's fears of inadequacy materialize as a pack of vicious dogs. In 25 brief chapters with titles like "Body," "Home" and "Bone," each claiming to illustrate a medieval virtue ("Constancy," "Steadfastness," "Charity," etc.), Brown reveals the harrowing plight of the first-person narrator, who is compared to an unsuspecting, lesbian Little Red Riding Hood. Brown's protagonist is at first amused and touched by the attentions of a strange and beautiful dog that appears in her apartment, then annoyed and increasingly horrified. "It became as if my house was hers and I the grateful guest," she laments, as the merciless alpha dog, Miss Dog, multiplies a hundredfold. "She disappeared me bit by bit." The narrator wants to leave but can't; she tries to destroy the dogs but recognizes their power over her. The work often reads like sadomasochistic fantasy, and, while Brown does allow the narrator to find solace and regain a state of childlike grace, her ferocious polemic is strong meat in the meantime, not for the faint of heart. Agent, Harold Schmidt.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 166 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872863441
• ISBN-13: 978-0872863446
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,600,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Painfully Honest, Luminous, November 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary (Paperback)

Rebecca Brown is one of the riskiest, most revelatory fiction writers around. The Dogs is at turns mythical, agoraphobic, profound, and suspenseful. It is easy to miss what makes Brown so powerful, because her prose is full of understatement. But her words are amazingly deliberate, almost incantatory, and the end effect is a terrifying, transcendent thrill ride. The Dogs is a fascinating story and - like other Brown books - an exhilerating read. Brown doesn't take any easy exits, and this is what makes her work so fascinating - it cuts to the heart of the most difficult, inexplicable human emotions and lets the reader dwell there for awhile. I highly recommend The Dogs.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Patience., December 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary (Paperback)

Rebecca Brown's books are challenging - they are beautiful and worth it. The bad reviews that she receives on here tell me nothing more than the writers weren't immediately gratified and lost their patience anticipating the climax or clarity spelled out for them in no uncertain terms, unaware that reading is a process in and of itself and that the most successful writers do not always tell you exactly what to think and when - some books reveal themselves slowly. Enjoy her words, the sentences, and the structure no matter how unconventional, without trying to rush her to a conclusion or a resolution because if that's all you're looking for you'll be left wanting. These are not feel good vignettes and are pretty moving. Reading Brown is an immensely satisfying experience for me.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mind Leaps, Growls and Paces, July 7, 2001

By 

Ellen (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary (Paperback)

When is a dog not a dog? When it is anything and everything else. In The Dogs, Rebecca Brown uses the totality of dogness--their bodies, habits, history, and varied relationships to human beings--as a literary tool through which to examine the depths of a tormented human mind. What struck me most about this work is that by making the dogs as real or unreal as she wanted, Brown gave herself a huge range in which to explore her subject.

The first chapter of The Dogs is entitled "Dog, in which is illustrated Immanence." Immanence means "having existence only in the mind." At first, this might sound limiting, but with The Dogs, Brown shows us just how vast the mind can be.