The dog it was what wrote the book
Can a dog narrate a story?
A couple of years ago I was searching for a literary agent to represent my novel, Lena’s House (which I eventually self-published). In a list of a dozen London agents seeking new clients there was one who said she did not want:
“anything that could be considered to be wearing a cardigan or that was narrated by a dog”.
As a fellow writer joked, what about a dog wearing a cardigan? (My dog, Percy, occasionally wears a gansy in the winter and is very fond of his dressing gown but he hasn’t told me his story yet.) Although my novel doesn’t wear a cardigan and features, but is not narrated by, a feisty little dog, I didn’t approach this agent.
Imagine my surprise then, when I read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, to discover that parts of the novel are narrated by a dog called Six-thirty. The dog acquires an extensive vocabulary because the heroine, Elizabeth Zott, reads novels to him. Garmus’ novel was developed under the aegis of the writer’s group run by the Curtis Brown literary agency. So there’s one agent who has no objection to canine narrators.
Last week, a friend recommended The Friend by Sigrid Nunez to me, telling me it features a dog. When I looked it up I found that the cover strongly resembles the cover of Lessons in Chemistry, on this side of the Atlantic (blocks of primary colours with an image superimposed, one featuring a headless woman in 1950s dress, holding a TV set, the other a large goofy-looking great dane).
Cover of UK edition of Lessons in Chemistry ; Cover of The Friend
Further research uncovered a misleading headline on The Irish Times book review page which runs thus:
Barking Brilliant - This experimental novel narrated by a dog is clever, mature, entertaining and delightful [My emphasis]
The novel is not narrated by the dog. The subs didn’t read the review.
All of this set me wondering what the animal’s perspective brings to the story. I have no trouble accepting that dogs have trained us to care for them and in return they are loving and loyal but I don’t think they taught us the three ‘Rs’. They have a wonderful gift for intuiting what is happening in their environment and are well able to communicate their concern, anxiety and joy. In many ways we make them mirrors of ourselves, our best selves (except when they chew the furniture and steal shoes). A wicked dog is one who has been mistreated, reflecting the darker side of our nature.
Seriously, is this what you think we’re saying?
Percy’s not impressed! But doesn’t he look smart in his gansy?
So it is in fiction too, the animal’s voice is inserted to provide another angle on the human characters and interactions. Certainly, in Lessons in Chemistry, the dog has more common sense than most of the humans. He is also, unwittingly, the agent of one character’s death, putting him in an ambiguous position.
Throughout history humans have ascribed supernatural wisdom and powers to animals, a role which persists in some spiritual traditions, folk tales and fables. It survives too in some modern poetry and fiction (Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven, Gunter Grass’s Flounder and Ted Hughes’ Crow come to mind). The dragons of fantasy novels are fictional creatures and therefore available to many interpretations. I have toyed with using such extraneous voices in my fiction too, a sheep’s skull once, and a silver fish. After leaving the work aside, however, and returning to it some months later, I realised I would do better to give those voices human form.
The dog, it seems to me, is a special case, being a companion, family pet and workmate, with which we are capable of forming an intense bond. A canine narrator is essentially a human in a dog suit, a pantomime caricature. This can make the reader feel they are being mocked and lead them to distrust the author. It can only succeed if the work is a satire, such as Kafka’s ‘Investigations of a Dog’, or is intended as a broad comedy, and then only for a short period. Perhaps the temptation to write from the point of view of a dog is an ancient colonial reflex in us, a hangover from the days when humankind perceived itself as having overlord-and lady-ship of the animal kingdom.
If dogs really could speak and write we might not like what they have to say to us!
Let’s talk about the animal as narrator. Is it a useful device? If so or not why? Do you have examples to share?
'Coy', yes Sara, that's a good word for Six-Thirty. Like you, I found Lessons unsatisfactory, in part because I am not a fan of the 'prologue' set up - a scene in the present followed by a long journey into the past to bring us back to that first encounter with the protagonist. There were a few too many detours along the way (symptom perhaps of the 'written by committee' effect), for example, the rowing, but maybe that was just me - I felt cold and tired just reading those passages!
Good point Robert. Yes I think a short interlude or aside from the 'animal' perspective - or plant why not? - is a salutary reminder to us that there is another way to look at the world. Certainly, although not written from the perspective of trees, Richard Powers' The Overstory gave me a new insight into trees and their capacity to communicate.