Wild Dogs

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

Helen Humphreys has earned a place of distinction in the Canadian
pantheon. Perhaps more than any other living Canadian author, she acts
as the mouthpiece of intelligent women on the fringe of society. Her
heroines struggle to find their own place and, through a series of rocky
interactions with slightly more assured characters, learn to connect
more effectively with the world around them.

At the outset of Wild Dogs, Alice appears to be another typical
Humphreys heroine in difficult circumstances. Unfulfilled and unloved,
her strongest attachment is to her dog, who was released into the woods
by an uncaring boyfriend. She joins five other vulnerable souls to hunt
for these once-tame-but-now-wild dogs.

However, unlike other protagonists in Humphreys’s novels, Alice does
not take full advantage of opportunities to develop. She drifts along,
from empty job to empty job, and from unloving partner to unloving
partner. When she meets the members of the group, she allows herself to
be subsumed by one person rather than forging bonds with them all. She
gets out of dangerous situations by accident rather than by insight, and
her few heroic acts are more a matter of happenstance than of bravery.

The other members of the group shine more brightly than Alice does.
Humphreys’s depiction of a developmentally delayed girl, for example,
is heartbreaking in its beauty, and the quiet endurance of an abused
adolescent rings admirably true.

Alice narrates most of the novel in a finely crafted voice. As the tale
progresses, though, it fragments into sections narrated by other group
members. These other voices lack authenticity, detracting from the
novel’s overall quality.

As an exploration of the idea of wildness, an aimless protagonist and a
fractured array of unconvincing narrative voices may have been what the
author intended. For this reviewer, however, these elements made for an
unsatisfying read.