Grey Dog – Elliott Gish

“Grey Dog” is a novel I respected more than I enjoyed.

Set in the early 1900s, it follows Ada Byrd, a schoolteacher who arrives in a remote Canadian farming town hoping isolation might finally give her some distance from a past shaped by grief and scandal. At first, Elliott Gish keeps the story moving quietly and deliberately, as Ada settles into teaching, wanders the surrounding woods and begins to imagine a version of life that feels smaller — but safer — than what she left behind.

Then things begin to slip.

Animals and insects start behaving strangely. Ada becomes convinced something is watching her from the edges of the woods. She grows increasingly obsessed with her predecessors and the secrets the townspeople seem determined to keep. Whether this presence is real, imagined or a manifestation of unresolved trauma is never entirely clear, and that ambiguity is where the novel does its strongest work.

The book is often labeled feminist horror, and that mostly tracks — though the horror here isn’t especially frightening. The real menace comes from the social constraints of the time: pressure to marry, the policing of female respectability, the casual acceptance of violence against women and how easily reputations could be destroyed by rumor alone.

Gish gradually reveals Ada’s backstory, including family violence, sexual shame and loss, and makes clear how little room women were given to survive those experiences without internalizing blame. Ada’s curiosity about the natural world, her resistance to social norms and her budding desire for women all mark her as suspect long before anything supernatural enters the picture.

Stylistically, Gish leans hard into gothic atmosphere. For a long stretch, the unease is more about mood than plot. That restraint works early on and helps ground Ada’s psychological unraveling, but around the halfway point, I started to lose momentum. As the novel layers in additional elements, the tension doesn’t deepen.

I’m also not generally a big gothic reader, and while I picked this up for its queerness, that aspect remains necessarily muted and indirect, partly due to the epistolary structure. It makes sense historically, but it still felt underdeveloped and, ultimately, oversold.

That said, this is a strong debut. Gish is clearly in control of her language and themes, and Ada is an often compelling character. I couldn’t help feeling the book might have benefited from sharper pacing or a slightly wider lens beyond Ada’s interior world.

The audiobook narration by Natalie Naudus is a highlight. She handles Ada’s restraint and gradual unraveling with a steady hand, and while she was new to me, I’d happily listen to her again.

While well-written and atmospheric, this ultimately wasn’t the book I hoped it would be. I’d absolutely read Gish again, especially if her next novel tightens its pacing and takes a bigger narrative risk.

Rating (story): 3/5 stars

Rating (narration): 4/5 stars

Format: Audiobook (library loan)

Dates read: December 24 – December 28, 2025

Multi-tasking: Good to go. The short chapters and diary-like structure make it easy to follow along, but it can also make you tune out sections when the pacing drags, so just be prepared to build in some pauses.