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).

I love the voice this author creates, and the world she builds with it. These characters are eccentric and vulnerable and endearing. The plot is rather less well-formed, but the storytelling is nonetheless well done enough to carry us through.

‘’It is dark. The paths unplowed, the ice moltens. The river is not smooth, not skateable, but coagulate with floes.’’ 

This will not be a review of many words, because this book doesn't need them. How can I place this haunting experience into sentences that analyze this and that? I will try, but I am certain to fail. This book needs to be read in order to be understood.

This isn't the usual short-stories collection. This is a series of seemingly disjointed snippets of Jean’s life, focusing on her mother and the need for a past that is meaningful and clear. We move back and forth in time. From the 1920s to the 1980s, back to the 70s and the 50s. We travel in Cambridge, Brighton, Boston with little explanation why. In fact, there is hardly an explanation at all in the story, and this happens because Jean -our sole eyes of the tale- has no way to find answers to her questions. She struggles to reconstruct her mother's life in an attempt to provide some kind of meaning to her own present. So, she relies on her memories to give a full identity to her parent and tries to understand her motives and choices.

It sounds confusing and my clumsy attempt to summarize it makes it worse, but it isn’t. It isn't, because the themes the story focuses on couldn’t be clearer and more universal. Family and motherhood, in particular, is the main driving force. It influences the narration the way our family influences our course in life later on. But to what extent? And what happens when the loss of our family becomes a reality?

The language is haunting, almost bleak, and the light that comes through resemble the light emerging from shut windows. It is sparse and dim. The writing is poetic, with very little dialogue and a plethora of inner monologues and observations. The black and white photos of people and dogs make the reading experience even more realistic and dark, almost foreboding. However, these elements aren’t the ones which make ‘’Fever Dogs’’ stand apart. What makes the books truly unusual is the importance of dogs.

Dogs move in the periphery of the narration, claiming the role they’re given in real life. They are caring animals. They do more than simply live amongst us. It seems to me that our dogs live WITH us, they share our lives and observe everything with their big eyes. What would they say if they had the ability to speak, one may wonder?How would they reprimand us once we took a decision that was stupid, illogical or even harmful? How would they try to stops us?

There is a beautiful passage in the book about the imagination of the readers, how each reader becomes a director in silence, how upset we may sometimes feel when we read something that doesn’t ‘’satisfy’’ the creations of our imagination. Do you need imagination to fully understand ‘’Fever Dogs’’? Probably, along with a hint of suspension of disbelief. Will there be times when you’ll have no idea what you're reading about? Yes, there will, and it won’t matter. Let the faithful dogs be your trusted guides to the past and the troubled present…

Many thanks to Northwestern University Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.