Allan Stratton, The Dogs, Penguin, 28 January 2015, $17.99, 287pp., ISBN 978-0-14-357259-6
The Dogs is a gripping story narrated in the first-person by Cameron, who, with his mother, has moved five times since he was eight, because, so his mother says, she needs to escape her abusive husband. But following the last move, Cameron begins to question this portrayal of his father. His own memory of his father is quite different. Which is really correct? What are we, as readers, supposed to believe?
In the isolated farmhouse which Cameron’s mother rents, Cameron seems to be encountering a ghost, the ghost of a child who has lived in the house before him. Is this really a ghost? Is it Cameron’s imagination or is he more sensitive to the past than other people. Whichever it is, the author uses the device very successfully to link the past and the present and to allow the solving of a long-past mystery. Perhaps Cameron is able to imagine how things might have been more intuitively than the adults in his life; whatever the explanation, it is his imagination or intuition that leads to the solution of the past events. Family violence, both Cameron and the reader come to understand, is not just a contemporary phenomenon.
Cameron feels isolated at this house and what he develops with the ‘ghost’ becomes something very like friendship, emphasising for us both his vulnerability and posing questions about the nature of friendship. His mother’s growing friendship with the real-estate agent who organised the lease of the house and for whom Cameron’s mother begins to work, makes Cameron feel even more excluded. His confused feelings of jealousy, guilt at his mother’s growing feelings for Ken and his concern that he might be betraying his father by being friendly to Ken are well drawn and convincing.
The story is narrated by Cameron himself, thus focussing the reader’s attention primarily on Cameron’s point-of-view. Nonetheless, we are given hints that things might well not be quite as he sees them, a situation which is highlighted when Cameron’s father tracks him down, with disastrous consequences.
One of the underlying messages here is the need for adults to explain things to children. Cameron’s mother (and some other adults in his life) often tell him that he’ll understand when he’s older or they’ll explain when he’s older. This leaves him with insufficient information to make educated decisions. Furthermore, we see how dangerous secrets can sometimes be. Sworn to secrecy by his childhood friend more than 50 years ago, Cameron’s neighbour, the farmer who owns the house where Cameron and his mother rent, kept that secret with dire consequences for both the friend and his mother.
The characters in the book are all credibly constructed, even Cameron’s father who only makes a brief appearance but who is sinister, menacing and violent. The plot is quite complex with a number of elements interwoven, very convincingly. The resolution is satisfying and believable and Cameron’s ‘ghost’ is laid to rest both literally and figuratively.
At the end of the book is a Q&A with author in which he discusses such things as where his idea for The Dogs came from, certain autobiographical elements of the story and the themes of the book.
reviewed by Margot Hillel