Bradfield (Good Girl Wants It Bad
) hopes to elevate "interspecies harassment" to high art in this collection of allegorical stories, most of which have animals for protagonists. But like a dog that won't stop barking, these stories echo the same themes—of cheating men and the women who love them, the ridiculousness of academia and the inability of language to communicate our deep desires. Bradfield tries for misanthropic satire of feel-good psychology: in "Men and Women in Love," a psychotic woman tells her would-be lover, seconds before she smashes his head with a golf club, that "Some things are really
real." Told as a series of documentary interviews, "Angry Duck" mourns the passing of Sammy the duck, who shot to stardom as a poet with lines like "quack quack quack (ad infinitum)... SHUT UP!" Since "compelling natural odors are not convertible into rich text format," two clever canines electronically conspire to make their owners fall in love so that the dogs might be together forever in "Doggy Love." George Orwell's animals proclaimed "Four legs good, two legs bad"; Bradfield and his creatures seek to eradicate the "false dichotomy of humans-slash-animals," only to wind up howling at the wind. Agent, Paul Marsh
. (Sept.)
