The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary

Brown (Annie Oakley's Girl) never contents herself, or reassures her readers, by resorting to realist conventions. In her latest effort, a snarling attack on the fairy-tale form, a good girl's fears of inadequacy materialize as a pack of vicious dogs. In 25 brief chapters with titles like ""Body,"" ""Home"" and ""Bone,"" each claiming to illustrate a medieval virtue (""Constancy,"" ""Steadfastness,"" ""Charity,"" etc.), Brown reveals the harrowing plight of the first-person narrator, who is compared to an unsuspecting, lesbian Little Red Riding Hood. Brown's protagonist is at first amused and touched by the attentions of a strange and beautiful dog that appears in her apartment, then annoyed and increasingly horrified. ""It became as if my house was hers and I the grateful guest,"" she laments, as the merciless alpha dog, Miss Dog, multiplies a hundredfold. ""She disappeared me bit by bit."" The narrator wants to leave but can't; she tries to destroy the dogs but recognizes their power over her. The work often reads like sadomasochistic fantasy, and, while Brown does allow the narrator to find solace and regain a state of childlike grace, her ferocious polemic is strong meat in the meantime, not for the faint of heart. Agent, Harold Schmidt. (Oct.)