A little scrap of a tale by Hans Christian Andersen begins with the following exegesis: "The Sages of Antiquity kindly invented a way of telling people the truth without being rude to their faces: they held before them a singular mirror in which all kinds of animals and strange things came into view, and produced a spectacle as entertaining as it was edifying." This spectacle, he goes on to explain, is the fable, and the name of Andersen's little tale gives the game away: 'The Fable Alludes to You'.
This title would have made a perfect epigraph to Lady: My Life as a Bitch, particularly since Andersen's little fable is about a dog torn between two opportunities who ends up with neither. For this is a modern fable about a girl who is turned into a bitch and who is torn between her human and canine natures.
The basic premise of this novel is preposterous: the idea that human beings can be turned into dogs. Given this inherent absurdity, I approached the book with some scepticism, even though I had enjoyed other books by Melvin Burgess. My tolerance was further tested by the fact that the heroine is unsympathetic and does not improve on acquaintance. It is, however, a tribute to the power of this author's writing that even the sceptical reader quickly suspends disbelief and makes the imaginative leap necessary to enter into the story, absurdity, repugnant heroine and all. A combination of urgency in the style and conviction in the physical detail overpowers the reader's resistance:
There was the sound of feet in the grass and their scent sank. I dashed after them, just as far as the door, still barking madly, and sniffed the ground where he had stood. Hmm - hot treacle, piss, warm grease, burnt cabbage and perfume . . . Then I stuck my nose outside to get a taste of the other one - burnt porridge, mud and new clothes.
This is not the first time Burgess has played with the idea of ambiguous human/animal identity. In Blood Tide, genetic experimentation has led to the creation of monstrous - though also in some cases sympathetic - human/beast hybrids. But in Lady, Burgess goes a step further by putting a human consciousness, with all its capacity for love, guilt, memory and self-examination, into the body of a dog, with its capacity for a very different sort of love and its searingly honest adherence to its sensuous experience.
Burgess has here taken the idea of the animal story, which in modern times is almost exclusively confined to children's books, and made it a thoroughly modern narrative ploy, by the superficially simple ruse of taking the idea absolutely literally. Here is no Mr Toad in a waistcoat or Peter Rabbit drinking chamomile tea: here are real, doggy dogs, running with the pack, chasing cats, copulating in the streets; and yet, though they are undoubtedly fully realised dogs, they are also a vehicle for examining human nature in the singular mirror of fable.
And yes, there is copulation, both canine and human, in this book. It is an example of that rare genre: the young adult novel, where young adult actually means young adult. Many adults (young as well as older, and not necessarily only fundamentalists and right-wingers) will find this book offensive, and indeed they already have. People are entitled to their views, and certainly it would be unfair not to warn readers of a traditional cast of mind in the area of sexual mores that this book is not for the faint-hearted of any age.
Melvin Burgess has an invigorating and sometimes disturbing knack for presenting things as they are, without either condoning or condemning them. In this book he looks steadily and clearly at teenage sexuality in much the same way that he looked at drug use in Junk, and some readers will not like what he sees. But there is nothing merely salacious in the sexual content of this novel, and the reader comes away from the book with the sense that young people experimenting with sex are as often confused, frightened and disgusted as they are exhilarated, excited and having a great time. And whatever readers' views on what is suitable reading for young people, this book is decidedly more responsible than much of what young people read in magazines and watch on TV.
Lady is punchier than Junk, though it is not as complex in its treatment of its subject; it is not as fine a book as the incomparable Blood Tide; and it could have done with being slightly shortened, for there is little plot and much introspection. But it is a clever, convincingly written and deeply resonant story.
Siobhβn Parkinson's latest book for younger children is Cows are Vegetarians, published by O'Brien Press