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LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS Kirsten Bakis
What will New York look like on the other side of the millennium? According to Kirsten Bakis' auspicious first novel, life in 2008 isn't much different from life in 1997 — just as full of fashion victims and only a touch more dangerous. The book's 21-year-old heroine, Cleo Pira, may hide a laser gun in her boot before setting out on head-clearing walks, but no heretofore unknown evil rises up along the way. She is merely adrift — major-less and manless — trying to get through NYU and a broken heart when a pack of dogs arrives and takes the city by storm. These are no ordinary curs: They're the realized dream of Augustus Rank, a devilish (and devilishly-named) Prussian scientist. Rank, a surgeon with homicidal tendencies, drew up plans for his dogs in 1882, then set to work on them in a secret town he established in the Canadian wilds. Only after his death are the dogs completed; they're bred to be super-intelligent, and they're surgically outfitted with artificial hands and voice boxes. After the dogs revolt against their human creators, massacring them and looting their coffers, they head out into civilization — or, at least, into Manhattan. Bakis spins out this fantasy with a fair amount of flair. New York is a place where novelty sells, and the dogs pay their way into prominence and suites at the Plaza. Their dress — slightly altered Prussian formal wear from Rank's era — becomes the rage. Even those who consider the dogs a hoax are not above bragging about hobnobbing with them, perhaps having "brought them takeout food, pushed an elevator button, recommended a computer, sold them a painting." The lonely Cleo Pira, though, merely seeks companionship that only a mutt can muster. She is immediately transfixed by the curious dogs, noting that "they seemed to live in a world not ruled by the laws of probability, and I thought that any kind of happiness might be possible there." Loneliness and sorrow are well-rendered here, whether in Cleo's pining to be closer to her two favorite canines or in their anguish at not being human (and, they soon determine with horror, not being long for this world). Less realized is Bakis' futurescape, which seems a device only meant to make the dogs existence more credible; she gives it virtually no distinctive character. A second failing is in her characters: While a handful are carefully drawn, others (especially humans like Cleo's best friend, ex-boyfriend and the servants of her dog friend Ludwig) are distractingly underdeveloped. Bakis has made a respectable debut here, but one stronger in the promise of things to come than in the story at hand. — Lise Funderburg
Lise Funderburg is the author of "Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity." She lives in Philadelphia.
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