Carmen Dog Views

General Goods

This trenchant feminist fantasy-satire mixes elements of Animal Farm, Rhinoceros, and The Handmaid's Tale . . . Imagination and absurdist humor ... Show synopsis This trenchant feminist fantasy-satire mixes elements of Animal Farm, Rhinoceros, and The Handmaid's Tale . . . Imagination and absurdist humor mark [ Carmen Dog ] throughout, and Emshwiller is engaging even when most savage about male-female relationships. -- Booklist. Hide synopsis

In 1990 came Carmen Dog, a novel about women turning into animals and animals turning into women, perhaps the funniest and the cruellest of her books, a sort of feminist Candide. The kindness of the innocent heroine, Pooch, triumphs over cruelty in the end, which is happy; at least it is if you want it to be. Even Pooch's children turn out well, setters, and all male. Why this book isn't a feminist classic I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe that's why people haven't heard about it. It should be a required text on Gender in all high schools and colleges.1

1. I taught Carmen Dog in a literature class at San Jose State University last spring. That is, I got permission to xerox the first three chapters for the class, since Mercury House had let the book go out of print and didn't seem interested in the fact that we needed fifteen copies. The class loved it so much they demanded that I get permission to xerox the rest of the book for them. Teaching it made me see that it is better even than I had thought, and there is no cruelty in it. Truth, yes. And funny? Lord! (9/2000)