Shelly Kawaja reviews Halifax writer Eliot Gish’s Grey Dog (ECW Press, 2024)
Grey Dog, by Elliott Gish, reads like a diary from 1901 that was hidden in the false bottom of a hope chest and discovered for our reading pleasure in 2024. It suggests that many of the social inequities and gender stereotypes of the time have also, maddeningly, been preserved to hound us in the present day; the expectation for women to play specific, and limiting roles, to suppress passion, repress emotion and spend the entirety of our time—in company or alone—playing instead of being. As serious as this sounds, Gish takes plenty of liberties and brings the idea of playing a role to a whole new level, leaning into horror to ultimately ask: What might all this pretending eventually turn us into?
The diary we are reading is that of Ada Byrd, a spinster and reluctant teacher, who leaves her father’s oppressive home to teach in the small, isolated community of Lowrey Bridge. Teaching is her only option. And so is this community. Her diary entries span the period from when she arrives in Lowrey Bridge, to the dramatic events that mark the end of her teaching a year later. I enjoyed getting to know Ada through her diary entries, even as she writes the mundane details of everyday life in this new place. How she goes about developing a routine and making acquaintances. The slow build as we begin to learn who she really is, the person she isn’t allowed to be, and the force it takes for her to consistently play the “good woman.”
As a spinster and school teacher she is meant to move quietly and politely from her attic boarding room to her schoolhouse to her bible study classes, but she prefers to wander off alone, exploring the woods with the eye of an amateur naturalist, collecting feathers and flowers and little bird’s skulls. She also prefers women over men and forms careful friendships with Agatha, the minister’s wife and Mrs. Kinsley, the mysterious widow who lives on the “wrong side of the bridge.” Soon, during her wanderings, she discovers that Lowrey Bridge, too, has plenty of secrets. She spots something ancient and beastly watching her—the Grey Dog. It offers her strange gifts; a swarm of dying crickets, a feral, self-mutilating rabbit, and she finds herself terrified, fascinated, and strangely, seduced. As Ada grows more and more confused, her grip on reality slips until she can no longer discern what is real and what is not.
This is not a fast, action-packed book, but it is compelling writing that moves with an ever-building atmospheric tension that feels appropriate to the time period, reminiscent of classics, and bringing to mind the Bronté sisters. There is an emotional distance to the narrative too that feels appropriate to the time period, and to Ada’s character. She is a guarded woman, even as she writes to herself, but her reserve is more than made up for as Gish cranks up the action in the last quarter of the book and Ada forgets that she is supposed to hold back all this rage. In Grey Dog, Gish has given us historical horror fiction that is bleak, mysterious, creepy and a literary delight.