Fever Dogs: Stories

by Kim O'Neil

Kim O’Neil’s debut collection Fever Dogs is a fictional biography of three generations of women. It begins at the turn of the twenty-first century with Jean, a young woman at an impasse. Romantically adrift, in a dying profession, she decides that to make herself a future, she must first make herself a past. To deal with a violent history, Jean’s mother has violently erased it. Starting from a bare outline that includes an unspoken death, a predatory father, and a homeless stint, Jean reconstructs the life her mother, Jane, might have lived. But origin stories can never completely cover their like Jean’s story, Jane’s cannot be told apart from that of her own mother. What follows is a set of stories spanning nearly a century in response to questions which the narrator wishes she had asked her mother and to which she has disjointed answers at best. In the absence of answers, the narrator, in various points of view, invents them. As the stories progress backwards in time, the footholds in fact grow fewer–and the shift to fabulism greater. But in her attempt to unravel her mother's origin and her own, Jean finds that the stories she invents—like the dogs who run through them as witnesses, allies, and objects of desire—serve as well as any other in the makeshift task of authoring a life.

Genres: Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

Published August 15, 2017

Reviews

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 2 out of 5]

2★

I’m a fan of short stories, I’m a fan of quirky, I quite like vignettes and hints of slices of life. I couldn’t even make it half-way through this book, which is why the low rating. But the “writing” is good. I know, kind of a contradiction, I guess.

I can’t tell you what the first story is about, because I don’t really know. It’s called “How to Draw From Life, Watertown, 2000”. There seems to be a studio for animation art and a new life model called Dragos, who prefers to run around naked and doesn’t (or won’t?) speak English. He is described in his hairy, naked strangeness “arriving witchily with nothing but a robe and broomstick.”

Later, someone’s place: “The living room is a still life, Footstool with Circulars which is a perfect description, telling me just what it’s like.

About a dog (not the Fever Dogs story) who loves attention: “He wants his face touched. Also his belly. He loiters in high-traffic areas on his back, just in case.”

About a man at the airport, infuriated to find his ticket hasn’t been book.. “Cesar is in a rage. He can break planks bare-handed. Where in God’s name is a plank?”

The cold:
“Jean’s final day at the studio, she goes running alone. It is the last week of winter, negative ten with windchill and the sky densely white. The river lies blanketed. . . When she returns to the studio lot, she cannot feel her nose or hands. Her blood has evacuated these disposables and repaired to her chest, favouring the organs.”

I remember feeling exactly like that, walking (not running) home from school in the winter snow.

There’s no doubt O’Neil can write, which is why I’ve included some quotes. But I couldn’t get enough appreciation of the story to continue. Others have really enjoyed it, so I suspect it’s just me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Northwestern University Press for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted (so quotes may have changed).

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was expecting Sedaris-type short stories involving animals, probably because I judged the book by its cover. The book is witty, but more poetic in structure and sentiment. I love beautifully crafted sentences that say a lot with few words, so I loved this book. Complex relationships between family members, between coworkers, and between humans and pets are beautifully and economically rendered. I'm looking forward to the author's next book!

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

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