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?
Dark bleatings, my subversive tribe. Today we’re taking a look at a horror novel that I was very quickly invested in. Grey Dog is set in 1901 and uses a first-person, diary entry style narrative – a storytelling method that I absolutely love, so this book set me in a good mood right from the first page.
Our protagonist, Ada, has been sent away from home to take up a teaching job, and a kind older couple, the Grier’s, take her into their home. Ada, however, has not only just moved for work, but rather was sent by her father, following some sort of “shameful” behaviour on her part. She has no family really, no partner, and no friends to speak of, so she is incredibly isolated, especially in a new setting amongst strangers. She’s fine with her vocation, but her passion really lies in nature. Plants and creatures are her jam, and she is fascinated by the natural world.
Thematically, to me, this story is about loss, shared female experiences, and shame. Oh gosh, the shame. Ada feels shame for an incident from her past – an incident that actually, she was only, at most, half responsible for. If that, honestly. She feels conflicted and shameful about her sexuality. Her father seems to delight in reminding her constantly that she is no good. She is shamed for a new friendship in town, and she is verily shamed for her teaching methods. They call her blasphemous and accuse her of paganism because she’s teaching the kids about nature. Ada is a very normal woman, actually, who is being cast as a weirdo by almost everyone around her.
And then there’s the small matter of the thing from the woods stalking her. She starts seeing, hearing, and experiencing things. She is dismissed when she tries to talk about any of it, but then finds out that the former teacher who lodged in her very room was also experiencing these things, so she is not imagining them.
It’s an extremely character-driven story and one I was heavily invested in. And, to my disturbed delight, it veered off in a direction that I wasn’t expecting, but the surprise was welcome. Ada begins to change, and I was pretty surprised with how. The author certainly didn’t flinch away from allowing Ada to follow the path most natural to her, rather than forcing her to make the more appeasing decisions. This story has love, warmth, and kindness, but also coldness, cruelty, and savagery.
I really enjoyed it despite the fact that I don’t normally enjoy period pieces. I’m still reeling from the ending. I’d recommend this to horror fans who prefer a more subtle approach to horror (but don’t get me wrong – this is most definitely horror, just not the immediate balls out kind!). If you’d like to check out the book or author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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