The Barnes & Noble Review
It was Jerry Seinfeld, in a sapient moment, who proposed the following: Imagine a Martian peering from the bridge of his flying saucer for a first view of Earth, and imagine his eye alighting on the common city scene of a dog taking its ease at a streetcorner, hovered anxiously about by a stooping human with a pooper-scooper. Of the two beings on display, Seinfeld wanted to know, which would that Martian assume was the higher? In planetary terms, who would he think was in charge?
The dog in the city is one of civilization's oxymorons, and the dog lover who is pure of heart will face this fact squarely. From the available literature one might instance here J. R. Ackerley's wonderful My Dog Tulip, first published in 1956, which records in fastidious prose the attempt of a London bachelor to allow his pet Alsatian the full and scented poetry of her nature, and the various embroilments that inevitably resulted. One misty September morning, for example, as the always-fascinated Ackerley is watching Tulip assume her characteristic "tripodal attitude" prior to defecating on a sidewalk in Putney, he is gruffly upbraided by a passing cyclist. "What's the bleeding street for?" shouts the man. "For turds like you!" shouts back Ackerley. "Bleeding dogs!" screams the cyclist. "Arseholes!" rejoins Ackerley. ("There was no more to be said," he later reflects. "I had had the last word.")
Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth is an urban man/dog clash of a different stripe. Written in loping half poetry (the term "free verse" doesn't really do justice to the long-range tautness of Barlow's technique), this extraordinary debut novel re-imagines doghood as a state of advanced criminality. Across greater Los Angeles, under the radar, men are turning into dogs and dogs into men. These transformations are not related to the cycles of the moon, nor do the transformed go raving around like werewolves (although they are happy to eat human flesh): they change at will, and as dogs they can pass for your average domestic hound. And most important, they know what they're doing: the dog-men are organized into packs and operate as muscle in the city's underworld, disrupting a drug ring here, assassinating (and then consuming) a competitor there. Sometimes they work as humans, sometimes as dogs -- either way the same stripped-down, food-first approach is taken to the business at hand. Admire the economy of motive here, for example, as a mixed canine/human crew invades a "mom-and-pop" meth lab and waits for the return of its owner:
The missing man comes through the door and
his shopping bag full of milk and egg
takes Ray's shotgun blast.
As the pack moves out, stepping
over the spilled groceries and blood,
the dogs pause to lap the yolk and white from the floor
then scamper to catch up to the pack.
What can we call this kind of writing? Action verse? Screenplay poetry? It is the idiom of movement, where there is no division between thought and deed. Christopher Logue used it, or something like it, in his translations of Homer. Ted Hughes, too, put it to work in his smoldering 1977 magical drama
Gaudete; to a correspondent he wrote that he was looking for a style fit to be "slammed head on, repeatedly, into the obstinate actuality of objects, of point-blank situations, of things as they are." Barlow's contribution is to add a twist of L.A. noir: a dog's-eye view of the city, needless to say, is more hard-boiled than the most disenchanted of private dicks. ("The green lawns of Pasadena hiss with wealth.")
Sharp Teeth is a love story and a thriller, with a number of excellent subplots. In one of them the shape-shifter Lark, an ex-lawyer who has formalized the ethics of the pack into a sort of executive bushido ("Discipline from the inside..."), is forced to go underground for a spell, as a dog. With humanoid cunning he gets himself taken in by a nice lady named Bonnie, a gentle pill popper and wine drinker, who rubs him behind the ears and whose home is so very comfortable he almost loses his edge:
It was supposed to be a week. It's been six.
No rush, really,
the packs will still be there.
The war is waiting.
Just a little nap.
The war is always waiting for us.
As I said, it's a love story too. Anthony the dogcatcher falls for a beautiful shape-shifter, in ignorance of her true nature. Or is it ignorance? His love seems to reach to the bottom of her being, even if he is unaware that she nips off from time to time to make a meal of somebody.
Their love is eternal because time
seems to have fled, embarrassed
to be sharing such a small apartment
with so much dumb affection.
In a city shared by dogs and humans, the greatest crime for both species is unattachment. The dog not owned, the person not loved or spoken for, is high risk: a coyote." After the hostile takeover of his first pack, which he had carefully assembled from the city's go-getting corporate layer, Lark adopts a different recruitment method. He trolls the New Age churches and the methadone clinics, the places where "the lost ones land like dandelion seeds"; he posts an ad offering 'Self-Reformation' on an extreme sports website. He approaches stray humans on park benches and promises them inexpressible fulfillments. Lycanthropic alpha male as cult leader -- it seems obvious now.
Let's end with a quick salute to HarperCollins, Barlow's publisher, who have gone out on a noncommercial limb with
Sharp Teeth. The hardcover is beautifully designed in black and blood-red, and it does one good to see such expertise lavished on a verse novel about weredogs. Next: a sequence of 400 linked haiku, in which Seinfeld's Martian teleports a squatting city dog into his craft and interrogates him whimsically about the meaning of life on Earth. Seriously -- why not?
--
James Parker
James Parker is the author of Turned On: A Biography of Henry Rollins
(Cooper Square Press). He is a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix.
From the Publisher
An ancient race of lycanthropes has survived to the present day, and its numbers are growing as the initiated convince L.A.'s down and out to join their pack. Paying no heed to moons, full or otherwise, they change from human to canine at will—and they're bent on domination at any cost.
Caught in the middle are Anthony, a kind-hearted, besotted dogcatcher, and the girl he loves, a female werewolf who has abandoned her pack. Anthony has no idea that she's more than she seems, and she wants to keep it that way. But her efforts to protect her secret lead to murderous results.
Blending dark humor and epic themes with card-playing dogs, crystal meth labs, surfing, and carne asada tacos, Sharp Teeth captures the pace and feel of a graphic novel while remaining "as ambitious as any literary novel, because underneath all that fur, it's about identity, community, love, death, and all the things we want our books to be about" [Nick Hornby, The Believer].
The Washington Post -
Elizabeth Hand
Toby Barlow's briskly entertaining first book, Sharp Teeth, aims to put lycanthropes first in the supernatural sweepstakes, with a narrative as relentless and powerful as a pitbull's jaws…[it's] plot is tightly constructed, if nothing new: rival dog packs fighting over control of drugs, money, power. The cast of characters is similarly drawn from noir stereotypes—good cop, bad dog, really bad dog. Still, any great noir lives or dies by its stylishness, and Sharp Teeth has got that in spades. Barlow's writing begs to be read aloud by Kathleen Turner, and he has a nice way of nailing his point in a few choice words…
Publishers Weekly
Barlow's gut-wrenching, sexy debut, a horror thriller in verse, follows three packs of feral dogs in East L.A. These creatures are in fact werewolves, men and women who can change into canine form at will ("Dog or wolf? More like one than the other/ but neither exactly"). Lark, the top dog in one of the packs who's a lawyer in human form, has a master plan that may involve taking over the city from the regular humans. Anthony Silvo, a dogcatcher and normally a loner, finds himself falling in love with a beautiful and mysterious woman ("Standing on four legs in her fur,/ she is her own brand of beast"). A strange small man and his giant partner play tournament bridge and are deep into the drug trade. A detective, Peabody, investigates several puzzling dog-related murders. The irregular verse form with its narrative economies proves an excellent vehicle to support all these disparate threads and then tie them together in the bittersweet conclusion. 5-city author tour. (Jan.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Jackie Cassada
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Library Journal
Down and out in Los Angeles, Anthony reluctantly takes a job as a dogcatcher, though his sympathies lie more with the death-bound dogs in the pound than with his coworkers. When he falls in love with a woman he meets, apparently by accident, he becomes unwittingly drawn into her world-a dark supernatural world of werewolves-and into the lives and ambitions of the rival packs of shapeshifters who haunt the fringes of society. Pulsing with feral intensity, Barlow's debut depicts the lives of seemingly ordinary people who have crossed the boundaries between human and beast and between predator and prey. Written in a free verse style that perfectly complements the action as it moves from slower-paced narratives to short, jagged scenes of graphic violence and heartbreak, this groundbreaking work commands attention from a wide audience, including genre fans and modern fiction aficionados. A superb addition to any fantasy or modern horror collection. [See Prepub Alert, LJ10/15/07.]
School Library Journal
Adult/High School- Barlow's debut novel innovatively mixes horror, noir, and epic poetry, creating a uniquely thrilling read. Ruled by competing packs of werewolves, the seedy underside of LA is far stranger than anyone ever imagined. Lycanthropes hire themselves out as hit men and pushers, both driving and feeding off the criminal world. At the center of the story is Anthony Silvo, a self-professed loner and dogcatcher who falls in love with a mysterious woman; she leads a second life as a werewolf and works for Lark, the leader of the most dangerous werewolf pack on the streets. Her growing relationship with Anthony causes her to regret the wild choices of her past and seek out a new life. Meanwhile, Lark suspects that competing packs of lycanthropes are after his power and he prepares for a massive, citywide conflict. Other subplots include a detective's investigations into werewolf-related murders and a comic bridge tournament that might have ties to the LA drug trade. Some readers might be initially intimidated by Barlow's free-verse poetry, but, after a page, they will be swept into the rhythm. It's also to Barlow's credit that the touching moments between the woman and Anthony work as powerfully as the most graphic violence in the story. The dark humor and grim story line will immediately draw in fans of other neo-horror novels, such as Christopher Moore's You Suck: A Love Story (Morrow, 2007), but Barlow's deeper style is wholly his own.-Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VA
Kirkus Reviews
Rival gangs of werewolves duke it out for control of Los Angeles in this dark but oddly tender free-verse novel. The werewolves of Barlow's imagined world don't adhere to traditional rules-descendents of the ancient lycanthropes, they feed on flesh and are able to change from man to dog whenever they please, regardless of the lunar cycle. Unofficially, there is room for only one woman in each pack, and she tends to link herself to the leader. Lark is the dominant dog in the beginning, until his girl (who remains unnamed) strays, and he is betrayed by Baron, a member of his pack. There are a few changes in leadership, but eventually Baron pairs with Sasha, a darkly seductive female werewolf, to form a dangerous rival gang. Lark's former girl hides out in human form with Anthony, a fully human dogcatcher. The girl is desperately worried that her new love will uncover her secret, yet she continues using her charms to seduce and murder threatening members of the werewolf community. Lark, meanwhile, seeking temporary refuge, turns himself over to the Pasadena Animal Shelter, where he is adopted as a pet by Bonnie, an insecure and lonely suburban woman. While Bonnie is at work, Lark organizes a new pack, made up of an unlikely cast of characters, including the token woman, an abused bartender named Maria. In other events, just as Lark's former girl gets ready to leave the werewolf life and flee Los Angeles with Anthony, she is attacked by Sasha, who is trying to bump her off. Though the fight ends in the girl's favor, it compromises her hopes for a simpler future. Lark is left with his own struggles, as he juggles his role as pack leader and his (unexpectedly content) life with Bonnie. Thoughthe free-verse form takes getting used to, it serves to heighten Barlow's visceral imagery. A refreshing leap across genres.
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