'They know that they are monsters, but I believe they do not really understand what that means to humans.' Lives of the Monster Dogs, by Kirsten Bakis.

 

'They know that they are monsters, but I believe they do not really understand what that means to humans.'

Lucy Nield reviews 1997 novel Lives of the Monster Dogs, by Kirsten Bakis.                 @lucy_nield1

Shockingly I have not come across Bakis before, and I am certainly glad that fellow PhD student (David Tierney) leant me his twentieth-anniversary edition for me to read. This edition also includes an extremely valid and thought-provoking introduction from Jeff Vandermeer, which makes you confront thoughts and themes present throughout the text.

A Preface introduces us to Cleo, who is going to tell us the tale of the monster dogs. Cleo informs the reader that it has been 6 years since the events of the novel took place, when was 21 the dogs arrived. Suffering from heartbreak she was walking in New York on the West Side when the helicopter landed and the first dog had arrived. What she saw stood on hind legs, wore clothes and ‘appeared to have hands instead of front paws.’ Many felt this was a hoax, or a publicity stunt for a new film… but many saw the dog as something else… as a ‘monster.’

The Monster Dogs come to New York, after rebelling against and escaping from an isolated town called Rankstadt. The town was carved deep into the Canadian wilderness and existed in a strange state of uncanny nostalgia of late nineteenth-century Prussia. The dogs are the result of a mad scientist-style dream of soldier dogs, that has been passed down through generations in Rankstadt for a century. Eventually the scientists give the world Monster dogs, who possess human-style intelligence, language, and prosthetic hands. Created to be dog soldiers but ending up as the towns people’s slaves, what could go wrong? Right?

Bakis offers us answers to questions we never thought to ask, about dogs, xenotransplantation and biogenetic manipulation. Through the almost diary-style or archivist-style writings, of both dogs and humans, we are presented with an alternative history that packs an emotional punch to those, like myself, who live with and love dogs.

A response to H.G. Wells Island of Doctor Moreau with similarities to texts including Wells, Orwell and Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bakis' Monster Dogs are the result of humans dominating the natural world and biogenetic and biomechanical science. Whilst the dogs may seem strange due to their old-fashioned customs and Prussian dress, their undeniable dogginess that they attempt to bury and separate themselves from leaks through, causing pangs of familiarity and nostalgia in the reader alongside the fear of the dangers of scientific intervention and revelations in the hands of unscrupulous, power-hungry humans.

I really enjoyed this novel, and for the first time (ever) I think this novel would translate into a film or a series beautifully. With the historical stories, elaborate but believable topographies and settings as well as the fabulous sounding dog/Prussian fashions, the story could walk off the pages onto the screen whilst retaining its incredible story line and emotional impact.

Bakis haunts her readers with Lives of the Monster Dogs, but in doing so creates something beautiful, whimsical, and poignant. A reminder that modern and domesticated dogs straddle a liminal space that is not human but is not entirely animal; trained, bred, and conditioned to live in human spaces by humans who decide they want to share. As Jeff Vandermeer states, ‘In a sense [dogs] are conduits between civilization and the wilderness, nature and culture.’ Bakis takes this to the next level in her novel, forcing us to not only consider what it is to be a dog, but also what it is to be human, and how these two states interact, co-exist and co-evolve.