Elizabeth Obermeyer

I always feel there is an urgency to a story that begins in the midst of a journey. Whether it’s via train, car, or other mode of transportation, it sets the scene for an escape, a life change, or an adventure. Sometimes all of the above. And then, to add to that, a novel with a story told through a series of journal entries always feels extra personal and even a bit decadent. You’re reading someone’s thoughts (even a fictional someone) and it gives a secretive kind of vibe from the get-go, like you’re getting away with something and learning the innermost thoughts of the protagonist. 

So imagine opening Grey Dog by Elliott Gish and finding yourself thrown onto a train midway into a journey, right into the opening pages of the protagonist’s diary where she hints at secrets and an escape from her past. Literary perfection! And it only gets better. 

Grey Dog opens in the late summer of 1901 with Ada Byrd writing in her journal as she travels to her newest post as the school teacher in a village called Lowry Bridge. There are some hazy details surrounding Ada’s past life and career, and we learn that she was removed from her previous teaching post under a cloud of shame which helps to deepen the mystery surrounding her past. 

Ada is, at least on the surface for the townspeople, the epitome of a spinster teacher: reliable, an upstanding member of society, firm. But through her journals we learn that Ada is all those things and more. She is intelligent with a keen sense of observation and a deep interest in and passion for the natural world. As children, she and her sister Florrie could be found exploring the outdoors, discovering and cataloguing their finds, and for that were often punished by their father. Ada reflects on this childhood and upbringing throughout the novel and we see how unloving and also, at times, violent it was. The mid- to late-19th century (and even well into the 20th, honestly) was not a friendly one for girls and women with scientific leanings. 

Ada’s journal entries typically outline her observations about her students, the townspeople, the weather, and other mundane subjects. Yet amid entries that speak of Sunday School picnics, village barn dances, and the day-to-day goings on of a rural one-room schoolhouse, there are entries devoted to her blossoming friendship with Agatha, the minister’s wife, and there is an undeniable yearning and a fire in Ada that is not at all what would be considered befitting of a spinster school teacher at the very beginning of the 20th century.

When you read a novel that is made up of journal entries, there is a sense of foreboding. How did we come to receive these journals? Who found them and what happened to their author? Grey Dog gives off an “I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but I know it probably won’t end well” vibe, which adds to its excitement. Gish strikes an incredible balance with this format because you distinctly know you’re reading journal entries, that’s very clear, but everything flows so well— the conversations, the descriptions—that you sometimes forget. Yet when you’re brought back to that realization everything aligns and the story continues without a hiccup. It is storytelling at its finest.

As the year goes on, Ada begins to hear and see strange, frightening things that seem to appear only to her and while she initially tries to ignore them and pass them off as odd coincidences, it quickly becomes clear she cannot. Her journal becomes more and more raw, and she herself begins to tip into unhinged territory threatening to disrupt the order of the village and her own well-guarded sanity.

This is a remarkable story of female friendships and an intense look at women’s roles in society, but it is also a story of appetites and desires and who is permitted to act on them. Gish does a masterful job of allowing us into Ada’s ever shifting mind, blurring the lines between reality and imagination, causing us to alter our beliefs multiple times as the story progresses.

Grey Dog is perfectly paced with gorgeous writing throughout and an extraordinary story steeped in mystery that is revealed entry by entry, bit by tantalizing bit. When the entire thing unfolds in glorious fashion, we are left with a beautifully crafted and highly satisfying ending that only adds to the book’s deliciousness.

I am so grateful to ECW Press for their ECW Insiders program! Huge thanks to them for sending me this book (and so many others over the years!) to review here on my blog. Grey Dog is out in April from ECW and I highly recommend you pre-order a copy.