Wild Dog: Sinister and savage psychological thriller

A dual narrative alternating between the outbreak of the First World War and the modern day, Wild Dog is the story of one isolated house and two couples who inhabit it, finding their fate entwined with the wild animals hidden in the surrounding hills. It’s a blend of two love stories, one taking place between a woman from the village and a German lion tamer hidden in the hills with his beasts during wartime, and one in 2017 between a couple from the cinema industry who find themselves torn between competing desires to 'switch off' or 'stay connected', and who inadvertently become the new masters of a wild wolfdog who must be fed, and will follow their every command. This is literary fiction with a strong environmental theme, in the vein of Barbara Kingsolver, Sarah Hall and J. M. Coetzee – ‘ecofiction’. It has elements of psychological thriller: one French review called the book ‘the new Shining’. This takes it too far, since things end largely happily and there are romantic and philosophical strands too, but there is certainly a good dose of suspense running through the book, and the sense that Franck is descending into madness and could do something truly crazy. With its strong focus on the natural world, the novel fits with the current trend for nature writing in non-fiction as well as fiction drawing on the environment, such as Florida and The Overstory. There are also echoes of classic ‘man and nature’ fiction including The Call of the Wild, Moby Dick and Lord of the Flies. The novel explores nature (and human nature) and savagery in the modern world and during wartime, highlighting issues such as animals being used for meat or drafted into the war effort. It's also about a fear of the unknown – in 2017, what wild beasts might be lurking unseen in the woods, and in 1914, the villagers’ fear of the outsider, the German in their midst, and the effect this insidious fear has on people over time - perhaps making them behave more like animals than they might like to think.