cover image The Literary Dog: Great Contemporary Dog Stories

The Literary Dog: Great Contemporary Dog Stories

. Atlantic Monthly Press, $19.45 (373pp) ISBN 978-0-87113-383-0

Although six of the 34 stories here are also anthologized in Michael J. Rosen's The Company of Dogs (see review above), fiction writer Schinto's editing reveals a distinctive vision, critical and slightly dark. ``Dog lovers, beware!'' she warns, explaining that she has ennobled neither the canine species nor its relation to man (as Rosen appears to have done) and has instead gathered works ``in which the dog is necessary to the effect that the author wishes to create.'' Among the provocative entries unique to this collection: Michael Bishop's ``Dogs' Lives,'' a fictional history with dogs painted into every scene; William Trevor's ``The Penthouse Apartment,'' in which an English gentlewoman's sensibilities are ruffled when her dog is assigned blame for the damage wrought when a neighbor's housekeeper hosts an unauthorized party; Stephanie Vaughan's ``Dog Heaven,'' which arrestingly begins, ``Every so often that dead dog dreams me up again''; Veronica Geng's satirical ``Canine Chateau,'' identified as ``a document from the Pentagon's ongoing probe into a defense contractor's $87.25 bill for dog boarding''; and Mark Strand's inventive ``Dog Life,'' about a husband's confession that he used to be a collie. (Oct.)