Dingo represents a slight departure for Charles de Lint – or perhaps “expansion” is a better word. Leaving his signature blend of Celtic and North American folklore, he dips into the lore of Australia for this young adult story about young love, old magic, and the payment of debts.
Miguel Schreiber is tending his father’s store in the resort town of Harnett’s Point – vintage vinyl and comics, the two passions of Miguel’s dad, an ex-biker – when in walks Lainey, a gorgeous redhead his own age – seventeen – and her dog, Em. Actually, as it turns out, Em is a dingo, a species of wild dog from Australia, also Lainey’s home. The attraction is immediate and mutual, although Em is not nearly so enthusiastic about Miguel as Lainey is. Lainey is new in town, and hasn’t been in school because she is being home-schooled by her somewhat overprotective stepfather. She came into the store in part to avoid Johnny Ward, a local bully from a whole family of bullies, and a couple of his cronies, who she thinks is stalking her. Miguel and Lainey meet the next day on the beach, but something’s wrong – Lainey is cold, distant, and obviously just wants Miguel to go away. As it turns out, that wasn’t Lainey – it was Em: the two girls are shape-changers, allowed to take human form only one at a time because if both change, they can be found by their birth father, Talleyman, who wants to use them to free Dingo, trapped in a tree by an ancient curse.
There’s a lot going on in this story – Miguel’s dreams, in which he travels to the Dreamtime, magical portals that lead away from our reality, revelations about Johnny Ward, who is more than he seems, and a climax that is truly surprising.
The strength here is in the characterizations of Miguel and Johnny. While Lainey is not a particularly well-developed character, and Em remains almost a complete cipher, both Miguel and Johnny are revealed as multifaceted young men of some depth, Miguel’s rock-hard determination ranged against Johnny’s unlooked-for, and deeply hidden, altruism. As is so often the case in life, if not so often in literature, Miguel’s determination too easily becomes pointless stubbornness, while Johnny’s altruism has to fight its way through his anger and the lack of a real sense of who he is: no one’s perfect. The two are revealed with subtlety and reveal once again de Lint’s ability with character.
Miguel is a distanced narrator, which leads to what is, I think, the most serious problem with Dingo: there is a distinct lack of engagement here, a flatness to the narrative that is surprising for de Lint. One thing that I’ve long treasured about de Lint’s writing, reinforced recently while rereading some of the early Newford stories, is the immediacy of his narrative, which more than anything else brings home the mythic quality of his story telling, the sense of magic hovering just in the corner of your eye. Sadly, that’s missing from Dingo.
That aside – because I think it probably won’t materially affect enjoyment of the story for teenagers – it’s a pretty good book, and it’s interesting to see de Lint venturing into a new area of folklore. It would be even more interesting to see him venture more deeply.
(Firebird Books, 2008)
