January 20-21, 2024: Ava DePasquale’s Guest Post on Grey Dog

[I’mreally excited to share my thirdGuest Post in recent months by a FitchburgState English Studies alum! Ava DePasquale graduated in December, aftercontributing immeasurably to as well as many otheraspects of English Studies and FSU. She’s got a great career ahead as a professionalwriter, as illustrated by her excellent bookreviews blog. I’m very honored to share one of her reviews here!]

Grey Dog: A Gothic Horror Steeped in GreyImagery and Irrepressible Female Rage

A book review of GreyDog by Elliot Gish, expected publication: April 2024.

At the tail end of the Victorian era Ada Byrd accepts ateaching post in the claustrophobic farm town of Lowry Bridge. Following thedeath of her beloved sister and a shameful incident with her previous hostfamily, Ada is welcomed by the Griers. She is offered a second chance in anisolated town where no one is aware of her tarnished reputation. The one roomschoolhouse in which Ada is to teach happens to be on what the Griers refer toas “the wrong side of the bridge” and Ada soon finds herself confronted bydisturbing visions whenever she ventures across. As Ada begins to lose her gripon reality, her new friends and neighbors begin to turn on her. As a voicebeckons from the wrong side of the bridge, how long will Ada be able to resistits call?

A true slow burn, this gothic horror has much to offer. Asuccinct look at grief and what it does to the mind, coupled with the horrorsof being a woman in Ada’s time, this historical horror transcends the earlytwentieth century to reach into our own and will truly disturb any reader willingto hold on through the slow build and slightly tedious setup.

This debut novel by Elliot Gish is a stunning gothic horrorsteeped in grey imagery, which melds into an explosive display of female rageand a return to nature.

This story is told via unreliable narrator through Ada’s ownjournal entries, and while this style sets the story up for a lack ofbelievability in a technical way, I was quickly immersed in the story and couldnot have cared less about the formidable amount of dialogue in Ada’s diary. Iwas impressed by Gish’s use of language and embodiment of early twentiethcentury vocabulary and style. I can’t say how accurate it is for 1901, in whichthis story takes place, but it sounded authentic to me.

In the first 1/3 or so of my reading I was struggling tobelieve that Grey Dog truly was ahorror, and worried that it had been mislabeled. I was quickly proved wrong, asthe horror slowly ramped up starting with small disturbances and continued todevelop into a full fledged maelstrom of some of the most disturbing gothichorror I’ve read in a while.

Elliot Gish has a gift for writing unsettling scenes, andcertain ones had me feeling like I needed to throw down the book and run forthe shower. This book was disturbing in very literal ways, as there are plentyof animal corpses and detached body parts, there are detailed descriptions ofwhat happens when you don’t bathe for weeks at a time, and there aredescriptions of what birth and violence does to the female body.

This book is disturbing in a psychological and societal modeas well, as Ada faces the horror of concealing her true self for society'ssake, there is the very real and disturbing commentary on a woman’s role andworth according to the early twentieth century norms and then there is thehorror that I think we all harbor a bit of, which is our confined existencewithin a manmade society vs. our instinctual inclination to merely exist innature. All things that when viewed carefully through the right lens are darklydisturbing and enough to drive anyone completely mad.

Ada’s spiral into madness and untethered feminine rage isspectacular. While on the one hand, our first inclination is a desire for herto find her way back to society and the acceptance of her friends andneighbors, it quickly becomes clear that there is no place for Ada within theconfines of the societal norms of her day, there is no way back and this is awholly uncomfortable realization for the reader. Throughout the course of thenovel, she transforms from a meek and guarded spinster, to a wild andirrepressible woman who longs to be consumed by nature.

“I am not a place where nature can be tamed andweeded and kept in order. I am tree roots – and dark hollows – and ancient moss– and the cry of owls. I am not a thing that you can shape, not anymore. I amno garden, but the woods, and if you ever come near me again, every bit ofwildness in me will rise up to bite you. I will tear your throat out with myteeth.”

Grey Dogby Elliot Gish

The supernatural aspect of this novel made me think of Slewfoot (my favorite book). Grey Dog is much less gory andconsiderably less violent than Slewfoot,and while it does not possess quite the same level of bewitching magicalongside its darkness, it is still absolutely exhilarating to watch Ada, muchlike Abatha, harness that same feminine rage to become just the kind of womanthat society fears most.

Grey Dog considersmuch about what it means to be a woman. In the novel we meet several types:school girls preparing for marriage, wives, spinsters and a widow. Ada’sexistence in Lowry Bridge, a small and old fashioned farm town, is challengingbecause as a spinster, and a secretly queer one at that, she does not fit thesocietal norm of wife and mother, which the girls of Lowry Bridge are groomedfor from a young age.

Yet she quickly befriends the pastor's wife, Agatha, whoseemingly is the picture perfect Lowry Bridge “woman.” Ada first meets Agathaas she tends her garden, symbolizing the taming and shaping of nature, an ideaalso embodied by Agatha as a character. Across the bridge, Ada befriends theoutcast widow Norah, a woman rumored to be a witch. For the majority of thenovel, Ada is stuck in a limbo between the two women, somewhere in betweenbeing the right and the wrong type of woman.

“A good woman. How odd that the phrase has such aparticular meaning. One might say “a good man” and mean anything – there are asmany ways as being a good man, it seems, as there are of being a man at all.But there is only one way of being a good woman.”

Grey Dogby Elliot Gish

As spectacular as Ada’s transformation is, it is also adarkly disturbing and often uncomfortable scene to bear witness to. As the besthorror does, Grey Dog leaves youwondering whether you have witnessed a supernatural experience or a totalpsychological breakdown.

Grey Dog is one ofthose novels that is going to stick with me for a long time. In part because itis truly unsettling and disturbing (I have a whole new fear of wolf spiders)but also because it is a visceral dissection of grief pertaining to loss, notonly in the traditional sense, but one that is exclusive to womanhood. There isan inherent feeling of loss that comes from what society denies women. In Ada'scase this grief completely breaks, and then remakes her. We are left in the endwith a swift close of the curtains, there is no closure to be had, there is noclear view of the grey dog, all we know is that there is no going back for AdaByrd.

“The God of outside waits for you. The grey dog. TheGod of outside. They are one and the same.”

Grey Dog by ElliotGish

[Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What doyou think?]