The following review contains spoilers. They are hidden under tags, so beware!
Grey Dog by Elliott Gish
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: April, 2024
Pages: 400
Genres: Literary horror, lgbtqia+, gothic fiction
The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd — spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist — accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past — riddled with grief and shame — has never seemed so far away.
But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something old and beastly — which she calls Grey Dog — is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory loosens, and Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, behaving erratically and pushing her newfound friends away. In the end, she is left with one question: What is the real horror? The Grey Dog, the uncontainable power of female rage, or Ada herself?
This book is about the undoing of Ada Byrd, and I enjoyed every second of it.
I grew up reading Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Shirley Jackson, etc., and really enjoy historical fiction, and a lot of it ends up reading inaccurately or overdone, but this book read so naturally.
Besides the beginning, which I think could have been slightly trimmed (just slightly!!!), I loved how surprising it was. I usually don’t look anything up about a book before I read it, so all I knew was that it was a horror.
Click here to see a spoiler
Ada’s queerness isn’t that much of a mystery, but it was so satisfying how Gish surprised us with the affair in Willoughby, the why. It’s the same for Agatha and how excited she got when gossiping about others’ misfortunes (as someone who watches true crime videos, I was ashamed to see some of myself in her). And Ada herself, becoming nastier and nastier as time went by. I truly enjoyed how the author took simple twists and went deeper, making the story so much darker and more complex.
All in all, this book had beautiful passages that had me stop so I could truly absorb them. It painted a painfully accurate picture of womanhood, which made seeing Ada giving in to her… desire? madness? freedom? all the more satisfying.
I would rather not say much more. Instead, I will just say this: if you like horror and slow burns, you must give Grey Dog a chance.
I took this picture a few years ago on a hiking trail in Pyeongchang. I spent a few days in a pointy, triangular cabin à la Midsommar, and it was cold and snowy and lovely.
The woods were lovely, and, much like Ada, I wanted to forfeit life in society and stay in them forever.
Proseography 
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