UC Davis Web Journal #2

Pam Houston's Sight Hound*

Review by Murray Dunlap

Sight Hound
Pam Houston
W.W. Norton & Company. January, 2005.
342 pages, $23.95

In her brave new novel, Sight Hound, Pam Houston deftly renders the story of Rae, a complex woman who finds herself in urgent need of faith. And not any ordinary pulpit faith, but a faith in the deepest machinations of life. Of past lives and lives yet to come. With the counsel of her three-legged wolfhound, Dante, Rae frantically searches for it despite herself, the years of worry etched like arabesque into the corners of her eyes. Dante has cancer and Rae needs salient proof that something exists that will carry her through.

Houston conjures flesh from type on the page. Her characters, so bright and clear, go on living in our soul far beyond the closing of this book. Houston imbues everything we need to know in this world with passion, a delightfully honest passion that will inspire any right-minded person to put their faith into something, anything, and live a better life.

Told in twelve breathtaking first person narrators, Sight Hound not only allows us to see Rae and Dante through their own eyes, but also through the orbiting views of those around them, human as well as animal. We see everything. From the expansive wildfire closing in on Rae’s ranch, to the therapist guiding her mind, to the human stalker threatening the one person she needs most. Houston does not pull punches or withhold a stitch. She simply tells the story and tells the story and tells the story. She does it with grace. And it will break your heart.

No ordinary dog, the wolfhound Dante possesses all the intelligence -and then some- of any human. He tirelessly works to guide Rae through transitions with men, transitions with friends and absent parents, and finally, with Dante’s own transition from this life into the next. Animals take equal footing in Sight Hound, acting as cairns, protectors, and psychics. They are often as wise as Tibetan monks.

Sight Hound centers on Rae. Her ropey legs, her Buddha belly, her panics, her ticks. But it is her heart that commands every utterance, smile, and cocked eyebrow we see. From the little girl with a Barbie suitcase to the playwright with a ticket to Lhasa, it is her heart that sends her running. It’s not on the page, but I imagine Rae’s 4-Runner, always, always with Dante in the back, to be a standard transmission. Something Rae grips and shifts with tight squeezing hands. But when it comes time for the next 4-Runner, she will buy an automatic. Rae is learning to let go. She is listening to Dante’s heartbeat and smelling the cinnamon of his ears and memorizing his handsome face. But she is also learning to let a man stay in her life, cultivating true friendships, and beginning to stop running to the point of collapse. Dante teaches Rae to slow down. He teaches her to trust.

Rae learns to trust Dr. Evans, her veterinarian, when the choices for Dante become impossible. She learns to trust Howard, her lover, when he sings made-up dog songs and assures her that it is healthy to laugh. She learns to trust her psychiatrist until he reveals his own weakness. Afterwards, she trusts him even more. Rae learns to trust her instincts, willing her manic personality to ease up enough to breathe. It’s faith, and through it, Sight Hound distils the very breadth of human experience to a girl and her dog. This one simple connection represents all of them, teaching us when to hold on and when to let go.

 

* This review originally appeared in New Delta Review, Winter 2005

Murray Dunlap is a native of Alabama.  His fiction has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Red Mountain Review, The Hook , and C'ville Weekly. One story received a nomination for Best New American Voices . Book reviews by the author have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review and New Delta Review.  His first book, Alabama , is currently under review with editors and agents.  Dunlap will move back to the South with his wife before the ink is dry on his California diploma.