[REVIEW] Ivy vs. Dogg by Brian Leung

(C&R Press, 2017)

REVIEW BY PRATIMA BALABHADRAPATHRUNI

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Ivy vs. Dogg is Brian Leung’s fourth book. In 2005, he published World Famous Love Acts (Sarabande Books),  a collection of short stories, which takes a totally different approach to the art of weaving a story. What his novels and short stories have in common, though, is their careful attention to detail and thoughtful rendering. The pace is measured and even, but never monotonous. If I might draw a comparison, Leung’s work is like the spokes of a bicycle, releasing a colorful streak with each turn.

The cover of the book, replete with a giant technicolor squid, evokes this colorful and vibrant approach to storytelling. The ubiquitous “We” that surfaces and resurfaces throughout the book seems almost to come across as the arms of that giant squid.

Which leads to the reader’s first question:  Why does the title of the book have the phrase “With a cast of thousands” featured prominently within it?

Admittedly, as the title announces, the story is about  two childhood companions, both contesting for the position of Junior Mayor.  Still, how many characters can fit into a book of 275 pages?

I realized that it is not just the campaign, and the contesting of Ivy vs. Dogg, that drives the narrative, but it is the town of Mudlick, and the people who can swing the vote either way, that make the narrative arc as inherently unstable as it is. I whistle and startle the neighbor’s cat who has taken to snoozing under the shade of our frangipani. I am sure the cat has a story to tell.  But, it takes a Brian Leung to make that an interesting enough a story to sustain  the reader’s interest.

While the book concludes with the election results and their aftermath, it is not so much the suspense that keeps one’s interest. Rather, it is the dry humor bordering on sociological satire that sails the story through. For, this is not just the story of the popular rich boy, with good looks and blue eyes, and the good-natured plain Jane. It is about the town and the people, their friendships and fraternities.

Yet it is the voice of the Committee that rules the roost, and hands us reason to chuckle or even take a tiny pause, and finally reflect. Printed in large, bold font, and enclosed in parentheses, these pieces of language act as would rumblers on the autobahn, as they slow down the reading, and at times, offer comic relief. It is not as if these dialogue sections always support the text, for many times they seem to be in contradiction to or ridiculously synchronized with that which is being implied in the story. For somehow, the story seems to grow stronger by their presence, as if they were a scaffolding of sorts, although they seem oddly askew, sometimes.

It is not as if the book is a rider to one’s moral conscience. It is not even a social commentary.

(Still, there are specific and concrete expression, which are very precise, and reflect the usual mindset of any small town, and all the people that could make it.

The book is dedicated to among others, also to  “ every home town whose children hear the whispering fists.”

What whispering fists? Later, much later, I realized that the whispering fists are the Committee or really the social pressure on kids who grow up to not be kids and sometimes get to be part of these Committees, or could these fists be fists of determination to be who they want to be, as they fight a social system and social stigma, social oppression?

Some things in the book are purely farcical, or so it seems. When a topiary shaped like a little girl is treated like one and the actual kids are not given enough thought, when  a little girl is hit by a car and soon forgotten or pushed out of the minds, when a little girl who grows to be sensible and social conscious teenager, when  the blue-eyed boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth is always a winner because he is so much more to look at when compared to the plain jane or the wallpaper, …ah, yes, that is the town of the whispering fists, with its omnipresent Committee, surely there must be an instruction or two on rearing children.

(Cultivate the skills of attractive children.) -The Committee.

Or even

(Make your child smoke a full cigarette as a toddler to discourage the habit later.) – The Committee

Of course, the Committee know everything, is always right, and omnipotent…well maybe…

Here is an extract from Page 23 that goes with the Committee’s opinion on Page 24:

“Whatever the case, it’s always been a rough bit of housing and if you live there, it says a lot about your position in life, whether you want it to or not.

(Home ownership is a foundation of moral stability.) – The Committee”

That is not as simple as it sounds. Because, in the book, a boy disses a girl, states she hails from the Pink Ghetto, is poor enough to only live in an apartment instead of a house, even though, he kind of likes her.

Ouch.

When I said, the story reels off like the spokes of something that turns circles, this is what I meant.

Each bit of the wheel that the reader traverses, enlightens us a little more.

(This is not a book for those seeking Enlightenment ) – The Reader

I really wonder how Brian wrote them, these Committee monologues.

My guess is, he wrote the story,  and then spent an awful lot of enjoyable  time coming up with the Committee says, or he watched people playing Simon says… who knows …maybe he read old newspapers as he went about with the editing of the book. New news is no news. Really.

Yikes, I sound like the Committee.

Even though, this book is an absolute unified collage of several stories, given the unique lives of the town folk,  there is a lot of intelligence that went into the pieces of Committee quips, they are hilarious and acerbic, simultaneously. Of course, some are almost innocent and funny…

(Mustaches make a lip reader’s job difficult.) – The Committee

Oh, wait. Here is the text that follows:

“Jacob Alter crossed his legs and put his arms behind his head. He was growing a mustache and it was coming out redder than his hair had ever been. ‘I’ve heard from a pretty reliable source that Ivy Simmons didn’t tell us something very important about her candidacy.’ All of us, as if on cue, leaned in to hear what Jacob was about to say.”

And there, the Committee quip morphs into being the chameleon that it almost always is, it changes its color when hurled into its given its context.

What they do is transport the reader into a social commentary. They offer scope for argument, they involve the reader outside  and beyond the story, enable and afford her to interact in the scenario, without having to interfere with the plot of the story.

The story meanders on, unhampered, as languidly as a horse swishing its tail as it grazes in the meadow with other horses who swish their tails too. And the reader, watches it all, takes it all while thinking about the moral and social implications of sociological structures.

The author becomes the magician; out come all these stories: rainmaker, a plant girl, a woman who talks to the topiary, the man who insists on a fence, and his neighbor who relents, old time  girlfriends, boyfriends, and many more, many many more, a cast of thousands, who fit right into the brackets that hold them all together, allowing them fit right into the plot of the main story: an election campaign where the contenders have to constantly upgrade their acts, for “each event  is only as good as the last event” of the campaign.

But, also, the writer, is engaged in something else: a sleight of hand … and we are drawn into it all, it happens, on its own, without the reader trying to make it happen. There is a story and then, there is a social commentary. The reader is both accepting the story and also arguing the structures and pressures of living in closed societies, especially small towns where everyone knows everyone else.

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Pratima Balabhadrapathruni is a home maker, writer, and poet. A winner of the in the Poetry Sans Frontieres contest twice in a row, she also has been chosen for the 2014 IWP workshop in non-fiction conducted by the Univ. of Iowa. Her work has appeared in OTATA, and Haiku Presence, Haibun Today, and other publications.