Book Review: "Grey Dog" by Elliott Gish

“A good woman. How odd that the phrase has such a particular meaning. One might say “a good man” and mean anything — there are as many ways of being a good man, it seems, as there are of being a man at all. But there is only one way to be a good woman. It is such a narrow, stunted, blighted way to be that I wonder any woman throughout history has been up to the task. Perhaps none of us ever have.”

- "Grey Dog" by Elliott Gish

As of this year, it has become increasingly difficult to find well-written horror that does not read like a really bad B-Movie. I like my horror to be visceral and haunting, I'm not really into monster and vampires unless the story is really good. For example: The Vampire Chronicles is my favourite series of all time and the story is amazing. However, nowadays there seems to be an abundance of monster fiction that has no substance. It's like reading some guy's mid-life crisis from being chronically online for the last fifteen years. It has definitely impaired his brain function but at least it's something else to do.

As I write this I am currently kind of falling asleep from a mid-afternoon crash and so, I've bought myself a much-needed coffee (though it's from a library so I don't think it's going to be very strong). I'm reading about something that feels a tiny bit familiar - a woman who is going to be a teacher, she travels out to have her hand at it. But that's where the similarities end. The main character goes on to travel to this weird and small town and live with a family friend and his wife. When she speaks to the headmaster, it seems like he is trying to avoid certain questions regarding the children.

I will say that a lot of this book starts by going through the who's who of the town. This happens for a while and it can seem a little boring because there really isn't any atmosphere. But, if you don't want to be confused by the amount of characters the protagonist encounters or the families that each of them belong to, then I guess this is necessary. There is also a lot of conversation about whether it is better or worse to have a religious framework to life and the main character's sister seems to make the better arguments as the book goes on.

When it comes to 'interesting', this particular teacher shows a child an animal skull in hopes that she will find it as cool as the teacher does. But the child doesn't find it cool. The child doesn't find it frightening. The child does the non-moving equivalent of 'why do I care?' Hoping to show this to her students, this is probably one of the most telling signs of how out-of-touch with the teacher is with reality - or is it the children from reality?

As we move along in the book, the true horror begins to kick in and we realise that what we have been expecting has been all wrong all along. Strange things start to happen. Insects attack and the woodlands come alive threatening to expose the past of a woman who was once asked to leave a teaching post. But what is that past and what does it mean for the children? In this very strange descent into the unreliable narrator, this book makes us question everything and, though its a slow burn - it becomes more and more worth it as it goes along.

One of the things I liked about this book is that the whole unreliable narrator thing was there the whole time and you don't really realise it before it's too late. I would ask you reader, to not read our protagonist as if she is telling you the whole truth though she is not technically lying. She is telling you some truths and leaving others out. It is a fantastic folkish mischief in which the narrator twists the readers around. If you read her as if she is unreliable from the beginning, it becomes an exercise in trying to figure out why. It is not so much as what the protagonist is saying as to what she is not saying.

So, breathe in the atmosphere and go to the woods with Ada's new class, our protagonist had a sister once and she also had a mother - but most of all she once had a reputation. Where did it go and what happened to it that she had to move to a village area in the middle of nowhere? In a book that has links to movies like Midsommar and books like The Woman in Black, there is a reason why so many people love this slow-burning deceptive and mischievous novel.