Grey Dog by Elliott Gish

 

The author bio in the book says Ms. Gish "wants to creep you out." With this novel, she hasn't succeeded, at least in my case. It's not a bad novel, mind--it stands as a potent inversion of just about every part of "The Yellow Wallpaper" while addressing the same themes and agreeing violently. I don't think the narrator is particularly unreliable (though it's possible I'm wrong) but she--or possibly Ms. Gish--doesn't seem to be entirely aware of the destruction the entity she's treating with is doing; and the entity in the woods, the God of Outside in the novel's terms, is deeply destructive on both a social and individual level. Sure, the feminist rage here is absolutely justified, but destruction is destruction, and what happens in the novel doesn't even pretend to be about rebirth.