Carmen Dog

An absurdist quasi-allegory in which all women are slowly transmogrifying into animals while pet animals are morphing in the opposite direction to become women. Pooch, who started as a setter and is now most of the way to becoming a young woman, runs away with the family baby after its mother, now nearly 100% snapping turtle, bites it. Out in the big bad city she has adventures as she pursues her dream of one day singing the lead in Carmen, eventually throwing in her lot with a revolutionary organization of vague aims. Finally she's reunited with her master, but all he wants to do is screw her . . . so she flees from him to the arms of a nice young opera singer.

The cover quotes stress the feminist aspects of the tale but -- although show more those are certainly present -- they struck me as less interesting than the more deftly handled critique of Christianity (or, for that matter, any religion anticipating the return of a "master").

Although I did enjoy this novel I may not have enjoyed it as much as I should because the whole time I was reading it I was fighting with the minuscule type of the Small Beer Press/Peapod reissue. Should I ever come across a copy of the original edition, which is presumably a bit more legible, I'll likely pick it up -- and I'll certainly keep my eyes open for other Emshwiller books. show less

Women all over have started transforming into animals and animals into women—in Pooch's household, she is now becoming a woman and the mother of the family has become a turtle. Things aren't looking good, so Pooch takes the baby and flees, only to end up caged with a number of others, being experimented on by a doctor and escaping again. What she'd really want to do is to sing opera.

This was a mostly funny book taking the idea that women are really a different species to an extreme and showing that men in general are useless in understanding women.

Interesting premise but I quickly got bored. A bit heavy handed.

Delightful, clever, funny and thought-provoking.

Fantastic! A feminist classic, or just a plain classic.

Tiptree shortlist retrospective