Review: “Dogs and Monsters” by Mark Haddon – Legends Reimagined in Short Stories

The human characters in Mark Haddon’s second collection of short stories often find themselves out of joint with time and their surroundings, thrust into a world altered by a sudden slippage. “The Wilderness,” inspired by HG Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, finds a young woman flying off her bicycle and into a ravine, expecting death for several days. Rescued by a passerby, her troubles multiply as she wakes in a mysterious compound, eventually discovering rows of caged animals and women, hinting she might join them.

It’s an unsettling premise, but Haddon’s focus is not on outlandish elements like gene-editing, but on the unsteadiness and disruption already lodged in our minds, making us mistrust what we see. This theme resurfaces in “The Temptation of St Anthony,” retelling the torments of Anthony the Great. The shapeshifting devil appears as his sister berating him and as disciples flattering his ego, but a stray dog grounds him back to reality.

Haddon is drawn to myth and legend, reworking stories like the Minotaur, the death of Actaeon, and the love between Tithonus and Eos, goddess of the dawn. Fascinated by the boundaries between humans and animals, “The Mother’s Story” presents the Minotaur not as Pasiphae’s and a bull’s child, but a “mooncalf” disowned by his father as a “repellent chimaera.” The child challenges male authority, a freak used to keep commoners in line. Haddon rewrites the ending for a happier outcome, showing alternative ways to understand demonization and alienation.

A shift in perspective continues narratives after they seem to end. “D.O.G.Z.” begins with Ovid’s account of Actaeon’s transformation into a stag and his destruction by his own hounds. Haddon imagines the dogs, meat-drunk and blood-crusted, feeling empathy they couldn’t understand, and the weight of brutal acts. The story spins through history, meeting other dogs from the hound of the Baskervilles to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Flush, and the Russian space dog Laika.

We limit our understanding when we narrow the frame and see ourselves as the main characters. Haddon’s delicately worked, patient stories reveal other visions when we’re not in a hurry.

Dogs and Monsters is published by Chatto & Windus (£20).

Source: The Guardian