Mark Haddon’s latest collection of short stories, Dogs and Monsters, uses myth and history as springboards into mesmerising accounts of isolation, tragedy and, of course, dogs, which are a motif throughout, from the hounds who mistakenly tear apart their owner Actaeon, to one who befriends St Antony at his lowest point. Haddon monitors the borderlines between man and beast, divine and mortal, and what’s real and what isn’t.
In ‘The Mother’s Story’, a reimagining of the Minotaur myth, the action is transported to quasi-medieval England. The first-person narrator is Pasiphae (though unnamed), whose ruthless husband has locked up her son Paul, born ‘a moon calf’. Horribly abused, Paul is transformed by the lies of ‘the engineer’ (the Daedalus analogue) into a monster to whom criminals are ‘fed’. Haddon explores a maze of misinformation, manipulation and power relations between men and women, able and disabled. It’s a gripping exploration of narratives and those who control them.
Greek myth is also the focus of ‘D.O.G.Z’, in which Haddon expertly retells the tale of Actaeon, who accidentally stumbles on the goddess Artemis as she’s bathing and is transformed into a stag: the account of his metamorphosis is so vivid it’s almost unbearable. I have a soft spot for Actaeon’s dogs, and here they are reconceptualised as transforming and flowing throughout history and literature, becoming all the famous dogs you’ve ever heard of. The story ends with moving vision of Laika, the first dog hurled into space – like Haddon’s Icarus, a victim of man’s greed and violence.
The standout story sees another mortal rubbing up against the divine, with horrible results (you’d think we’d learn). It’s Tithonus, who has been given immortality, but not eternal youth, when the dawn goddess falls for him. In ‘The Quiet Limit of the World’, he slowly ages through the centuries, and his growing detachment from the human world and inability to properly connect with his divine lover is poignantly described.
The tight prose and descriptive range are remarkable. Haddon is able to conjure up the demons that threaten the titular saint in ‘The Temptation of St Antony’, or the sweat-stained odours of a 1970s boarding school in ‘My Old School’, in which a coward faces up to the consequences of his actions. There isn’t much room for redemption in this wise, immersive book: but there is always space for a bat-squeak of hope. And, with a faithful mutt by your side, you’ll (usually) be all right in the end.
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