Dogs and Monsters: Stories

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 59 seconds

Today, I started reading Dogs and Monsters: Stories by Mark Haddon. The collection features eight captivating and imaginative stories that blend Greek myths with contemporary dystopian narratives. The stories explore themes of mortality, moral choices, and various forms of love, including romantic, familial, and self-love. Haddon’s clear-eyed vision is infused with deep empathy.

In addition, Haddon’s fluid prose showcases his remarkable powers of observation, both of the physical world and the inner workings of the human psyche. Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia with their timeless appeal and enduring lessons about fate, hubris, and life’s uncertainties. In Dogs and Monsters: Stories, Mark Haddon delves into the heart of these ancient fables and presents them in a fresh light. For instance, in one story, the dawn goddess Eos requests that Zeus grant her lover Tithonus eternal life but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In “The Quiet Limit of the World,” Haddon imagines Tithonus’s life as he ages over thousands of years, transforming this cautionary tale about tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on observing death from the outside. This tale ultimately explores how carnal love evolves into something more profound and poignant over time.

In “The Mother‘s Story,” Haddon reinterprets the myth of the Minotaur, born of the monstrous lust of King Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë. He turns it into a heartbreaking parable of a mother’s love for a damaged child and the more tangible monstrosities of patriarchy. In “D.O.G.Z.,” the story of Actaeon, who was transformed into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and was subsequently torn apart by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor for the continuum of human and animal behavior.

Other stories in Dogs and Monsters: Stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—such as genetic engineering, attempts to escape the future, and the cruelty of adolescent ostracism. These stories showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that concerned the Greeks but in a fresh and intriguing light. Haddon‘s tales cover a wide range of themes, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, and explore love alongside stories of cruelty. They take readers from battlefields to bed and breakfasts and from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all bound together by profound sympathy and an insight into how human beings think, feel, and act when pushed to their limits.

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Monkey Grip: A Novel

Read: February 2024

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Monkey Grip: A Novel

by Helen Garner

Today, I began reading Monkey Grip: A Novel by Helen Garner. It’s a book that launched the career of one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. The story follows the infatuations of a young, single mother fascinated by the excesses of Melbourne’s late-70s counterculture. Monkey Grip is a seminal novel about Australia’s turbulent 1970s, including communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs, and sex.

Helen Garner is a renowned novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. She’s best known for her frank, unsparing, and intricate portrayals of Australian life, often drawn from the pages of her journals and diaries. A new US edition of her debut novel, which establishes Garner’s masterful and quietly radical literary voice, is now available.

The novel is set in Australia during the late 1970s and tells the story of Nora, a single mother and writer. Nora navigates Melbourne’s bohemian underground with her young daughter, Gracie, in tow. Nora falls in love with Javo, a flighty man trapped in his addiction. As their relationship disintegrates, Nora struggles to wean off a love that feels impossible to live without.

When Monkey Grip was first published in 1977, it caused a sensation. Critics praised Garner for her craft, but many criticized her gritty depictions of the human body, frankness about sex and drugs, the mess of motherhood, and her unabashed use of her own life as inspiration. Today, such criticism feels old-fashioned and glaringly gendered, and Monkey Grip is considered a modern masterpiece.

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The Night Swim

Read: January 2022

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The Night Swim

by Megan Goldin

The Night Swim by Megan Goldin is a book that I thought would be different from the last two books – Sarah’s Key and Send for Me – that I had read. Both of those were directly or indirectly about the Holocaust. I often selected this book from the e-library based on reviews and reading the sample section.

The Night Swim was a page-turner, but it also was about numerous social issues that Jan ad I had spent our lives working to resolve.

Among these are male violence and its impact directly and indirectly on women. Rachel Krall, a podcaster, spoke about how male violence had impacted her. Two of the other female characters were either a victim or the sister of a victim. Having spent my life trying not to exhibit male violence, I was reminded while reading his novel of how painful it can be and the impact of micro-aggressions.

I knew that the author had done her research when I realized that. Ms. Goldin set the story in Neapolis, a fictional town on the outer banks of North Carolina. Neapolis, which in Latin means “New Town,” is also the old Roman name for the biblical city of Sheechem, where the rape of Dinah took place.

I missed the role of the Nightingale as it appears more as a background piece and not a primary role. Of course, this is a subtle reference by the author to Greek mythology and the rape of Philomela by her sisters’ husband. Her assailant cut out her tongue to prevent her from speaking of the crime. She was turned into a nightingale to escape. That is why female nightingales cannot sing. The one in the novel never sings and is rescued by Rachel at the end of the book.

Rachel narrates two sections of the novel, first with her on-the-ground work at the trial and second with her podcasts.

Hannah’s narrative is initially only in letters and then emails.

This format helped move the story along and make the story unfold in unique ways.

The following is a summary from Goodreads.

After the first season of her true-crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall is now a household name―and the last hope for thousands of people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town’s golden boy, a swimmer, destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating―but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered―and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody seems to want to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what happened to Jenny?

I highly recommend this novel and look forward to reading more of Ms. Goldin’s work.

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Let Us Descend: A Novel

Read: November 2023

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Let Us Descend: A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

Today, I started reading Let Us Descend: A Novel by Jesmyn Ward. She is a two-time National Book Award winner, the youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and a MacArthur Fellow. The book is a haunting masterpiece that is sure to become an instant classic. It tells the story of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

The book’s title is from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno: “‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.” Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, beautifully rendered yet heart-wrenching. The novel takes us on a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis is the reader’s guide through this hellscape, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her. As Annis struggles through the miles-long march, she turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout the journey, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history, spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

Let Us Descend is a magnificent novel that inscribes Black American grief and joy in the very land of the American South. Ward’s writing takes you through the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the South, making this novel a masterwork for the ages.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Can You Feel This?

Read: January 2023

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Can You Feel This?

by Julie Orringer

Today I read Can You Feel This? by Julie Orringer. This short story rekindled so many memories. In the chaos of a maternity ward, memories of tragedy and grief come flooding back for an anxious mother-to-be as she struggles to balance her child’s needs with her healing. Although Jan and I did not have the shadows of tragedy and grief when our sons were born, this short story was more than a page-turner. Can You Feel This? reminded me of the power of the love Jan and I shared.

When our second son was born, we almost had him at home or in the as we waited too long. In Can, You Feel This? , that was not the case. Both children had two loving parents but also grandparents.

When Jan had the first of several hospitalizations, she was in the hospital where her mother died. Jan told me her feelings, and I comforted her, but I could not fully comprehend her angst.

Can You Feel This? is part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. This is the second one in the series I have read. The previous one was Everything That my Mother Taught Me.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Rushed into an emergency cesarean section, a woman finds herself in the same hospital where her suicidal mother died. She’s buried the trauma of her mother’s last hours—and also the dread that she might be just as vulnerable to breaking. As the new mother relives one crisis in the midst of another, prize-winning author Julie Orringer turns the joyous event of birth into a harrowing, poignant short story.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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Midwives

Read: June 2022

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Midwives: A Novel

by Chris Bohjalian

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian is “a compulsively readable novel that explores questions of human responsibility that are as fundamental to our society now as they were when the book was first published.” Forty years after the book was published, it is just as relevant, if not more so. Indeed, the book’s topics are more relevant today with the current set of decisions by the Supreme Court.

After reading The Pull of the Stars and watching every season of Call the Midwivesthis was the logical next book for me to read. It is also one that I know Jan read and liked. 

I highly recommend this book!

The Goodreads summary provides a concise overview. 

The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby’s life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if—as Sibyl’s assistant later charges—the patient wasn’t already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her?

As recounted by Sibyl’s precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except that all its participants are acting from the highest motives—and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the best novels ever do


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In Five Years

Read: September 2021

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In Five Years

by Rebecca Serle

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle is a good, quick read. It is an “unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny.”

The protagonist Dannie Kohan is a Type A lawyer who has her life planned out by the numbers. Everything she believes will happen according to her plan. But life sometimes throws us a curveball.

She applies for the job she has always wanted, and her boyfriend proposes to her. Everything is going according to her plan. She returns home believing that life is going as planned and falls asleep.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

There are twists and turns, including her best friend introducing her new boyfriend, who happens to be the man she was with briefly in 2025. Her friends’ struggle with and eventual death from Ovarian cancer forces Dannie to confront life as is. Her friend reminds her that she has never truly experienced love and needs to stop controlling her life and those around her.

In five years is a question I am asking myself. Where will I be five years after Jan’s death?

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