The Dogs of Detroit
Ratings1
Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
The 14 stories of The Dogs of Detroit each focus on grief and its many strange permutations. This grief alternately devolves into violence, silence, solitude, and utter isolation. In some cases, grief drives the stories as a strong, reactionary force, and yet in other stories, that grief evolves quietly over long stretches of time. Many of the stories also use grief as a prism to explore the beguiling bonds within families. The stories span a variety of geographies, both urban and rural, often considering collisions between the two.
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I won this a good while ago in a Goodreads raffle.
The author is quite talented in exploring grief, violence, abuse and toxic masculinity.
Warning: Every single story, except maybe one, has animal death, or animal torture, or detailed descriptions of butchering. I used to work at an animal shelter in Detroit, complete with a cruelty department, so the story about shooting wild dogs in Detroit was kinda darkly absurd for me.
Many of the stories contain people beating on each other for sport, or to get out their rage.
There are no happy endings.
I don't feel, as much as I admire the author's talent, that I would read another book by him.Relentless depictions of animals being shot, set on fire, tortured, and hopeless, abused, and abusing humans, are not a good cocktail for me.
