'Sharp Teeth' by Toby Barlow - BOOK REVIEW - Los Angeles Times

January 26, 2008

Toby Barlow's debut novel, "Sharp Teeth," is far from a shaggy dog story. And that's saying something considering the many stray lycanthropes -- beings who shape-shift from humans into dogs without need of a full moon -- that wander its gritty pages. Writing in free verse, Barlow whips up a narrative stew of L.A. misfits, whacked black marketeers and bridge players who prove more ominous than C.M. Coolidge's poker-playing dogs.

The top dog is Lark, a lawyer turned werewolf whose bark is often worse than his bite. Lark's pack is at war and, with the pack's unnamed woman gone (we are informed that "every pack must have one"), Lark sets out to find her. This woman, never named, has no desire to lead Lark's kind of dog's life and becomes the girlfriend of kindhearted dogcatcher Anthony Silvo. Anthony is the novel's empathic center. (He feeds carne asada tacos to three caged canines who somehow avoid the euthanasist's needle.) There's also a detective story and a few satirical assaults thrown into this monster mash-up.

Barlow pulls this off, in part, because his fantastical slant resembles Alfred Bester's 1952 time-travel short story, "Hobson's Choice," in which a panhandler is revealed to be a refugee from the future who can't fit into the present. In "Sharp Teeth," Lark at one point reverts into a dog whose owner tells him, "Oh Buddy, if only I had a boyfriend, he could tell me I wasn't crazy."

Throughout, Barlow uses the phrase, "Pay attention," suggesting great import to be scythed from this mad poetic fallow. Sticklers for rhythm may be disappointed by Barlow's free-form prosody. Barlow is fond of deploying internal rhyme without a proper caesura, such as "the lush green sod of the quad she had only three loves" and "the room licked clean, more pristine."

But Barlow's imagery is magnificent. When one of Lark's lieutenants makes sad love with a woman, her body has "as many scars as a choppy sea." Pages later, Anthony happily holds his girlfriend "in Pacific waves," suggesting an ocean both topographic and tranquil. Or is there a finer comparison? Barlow includes this pun: " 'See,' he said, 'We're stronger than this.' " Anthony's girlfriend is likewise described as "a flower that belongs to no bouquet." A ruthless director has all "the warmth of a Tiffany crystal and the instincts of a hit man." And in one of the book's most striking passages, Anthony's love is "just about the weight of a casserole she's taking out of the oven right now."

But his mythology falters a bit. The dogs believe the universe is run by a prime mover and a coyote. Instead of elaborating on this intriguing dichotomy, Barlow offers throwaway references to the "Ukan way," which also involves the pedestrian maxim, "Abstain, and ride the tension." But this may be the point because he also has fun with the way genre conventions rely on after-the-fact explanations. When Anthony pins down a mighty lycanthrope with mere human puissance, he explains, "Look, I should probably mention, I'm trained in martial arts."

Forget the neo-Lovecraftian triumphs of New Weird. There now appears to be a type of fantasy novel that might be identified as New Giddy. "Sharp Teeth" is a kooky combo of grit, goofiness and gusto. Like Brian Francis Slattery's "Spaceman Blues," "Sharp Teeth" demonstrates that fantasy, unlike more literary offerings that play it too safe, may just be the place to find true exuberance and stylistic innovation.

Edward Champion hosts a cultural website at www.edrants.com.

Sharp Teeth

Toby Barlow

HarperCollins: 312 pp., $22.95