Reading is usually a solitary activity, but it made sense to read Lauren Holmes’ debut story collection, “Barbara the Slut and Other People,” with my dog curled up beside me on the couch. He slept there for hours as I read one unassumingly affecting story after another. “This is so good,” I told him, but he’d only wake up when I laughed out loud or wiped away the occasional tear. “It’s just allergies,” I said.
Living can be a distressingly solitary activity too, and Holmes —who earned an M.F.A. from Hunter College and has published work in Granta and Guernica — explores this hard truth with unexpected poignancy, subtlety and humor. Her characters are students and urbanites and rule-breakers and quarter-life-crisis-havers, some of who own dogs — or want to.
In “Pearl and the Swiss Guy Fall in Love,” a young New Yorker experiences a lull in her dating life, in part because her rescue dog, Pearl, is terrified of men. It begins with a great first line: “I hadn’t had sex in over a year, partly because I didn’t like anyone I met on the Internet and partly because I adopted a pit bull who wouldn’t let men into my apartment.” But she meets a Swiss guy, and as one can deduce from the title, he and Pearl eventually warm up to each other — just when the narrator’s feelings for the Swiss guy are cooling way down.
In “Desert Hearts,” a law school grad finds work in a San Francisco sex-toy shop, partially to spite her father and partially because she has no idea what she wants out of life, besides intimacy and companionship and belonging — all of which are becoming increasingly scarce at home. When she suggests to her workaholic lawyer fiancé that they have a baby, he makes a case for a dog instead. What can soothe existential unrest the way a dog can?
Holmes is so skillful at characterization — weaving in specific details that illustrate everyday desires, failures and striving (epiphanies while jogging that are promptly forgotten; tiny miscommunications; sex, both good and bad) — that I was suddenly skeptical when I came to “My Humans,” the third-to-last story in the book, which is told from the point of view of a dog: “New humans are here. I smell them. Everybody is barking.” I feared it was Holmes who was barking up the wrong tree.
In fact, “My Humans” is every bit as moving as the other stories in the collection and, while not perfect — a dog’s inner thoughts can be a bit repetitive, especially when it comes to sensory detail (“The meat is in my bowl. I eat it. It is delicious.”) — it tells us just as much, if not, more about people than the stories actually narrated by people. From the dog’s matter-of-fact observations, we learn a surprising amount about the complicated emotional turmoil between her two owners, a dating couple. We even feel our sympathies shift over the course of the story as a result of her simple, unsentimental statements. “My Humans” proves Holmes could write from the point of view of a Tupperware bowl and it would be compelling.
The titular “Barbara the Slut” closes out the book (one of a few stories devoid of dogs) and tackles the all-too-timely topic of bullying and slut-shaming. Barbara is a teen with an autistic brother, exceptional grades and an active sex life who becomes, perhaps due to her intelligence or unapologetic nature or perhaps her schoolmates’ jealousy, the target of hate. Equipped with some sort of inner “it gets better” resolve, she attempts to fix her eyes on a future at Princeton. Quite simply, it’s brilliantly written.
In the acknowledgments, Holmes — who I predict has a long and promising career ahead — gives her own dogs much credit: “for inspiring me, for making me laugh, and for rescuing me from the loneliness of being human.”
And now, if you’ll excuse me … my allergies are acting up again.
Laura Pearson is a Chicago-based journalist specializing in arts and culture.
“Barbara the Slut and Other People”
By Lauren Holmes, Riverhead, 264 pages, $27.95