Grey Dog begins as an immersive historical fiction story of a young teacher with a shocking past in 1900s rural England, but it becomes a haunting feminist, magical realism story about taking back power and letting go of restrictive expectations.
A good woman. How odd that the phrase has such a particular meaning. One might say “a good man” and mean anything — there are as many ways of being a good man, it seems, as there are of being a man at all. But there is only one way to be a good woman. It is such a narrow, stunted, blighted way to be that I wonder any woman throughout history has been up to the task. Perhaps none of us ever have.
It's 1901, and Ada Byrd has accepted a teaching position in a rural community following a scandal and abrupt departure from her last post. Her cruel, controlling father is high up in the school board, so while he lords over her this "favor" of allowing her to serve a new role, he also forces her to be a teacher in the first place.
Ada boards with a staid, kind, slightly boring couple and also befriends the minister's wife. She's determined not to make any waves. But a young, half-feral female student and a shockingly unorthodox widow both seem to hold mysterious secrets--and both intrigue Ada.
Ada begins to learn delicate secrets of those in the community even as she protects her own scandalous past.
A haunting power seems to swirl through the small village, both disturbing and intriguing Ada. And the more often she encounters it, the more difficult it becomes for Ada to check her temper, her opinions, her yearning for freedom, and her desire to speak her mind.
She finds herself shocking others and herself with her frank speech, her rejection of societal norms for women, and her moments of cruelty when others show vulnerability.
This is a feminist historical fiction story in which women--long kept quiet and still, supervised to prevent their freedom, and dismissed and condescended to--strike back, lash out, and reject the constraints put on them. Magical realism allows the force that haunts, challenges, and pushes them to take the form of a beast, whose presence only the bravest women embrace and accept.
I loved the setting and detail of the historical fiction story, but I became fully hooked as the tale morphed into something wonderfully eerie and unusual. I couldn't wait to find out how it ended.
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You might also like my Bossy reviews of other historical fiction books set in the 1900s.
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