The short story collection that inspired this year's award-winning film of the same name, Rust and Bone is an unsettling read. Craig Davidson strips humanity down to its most base and conflicted. In "A Mean Utility", ad exec James Paris enters his dogs into bloody fights as an antidote to the emasculation of being unable to conceive with his wife. Davidson enjoys drawing attention to man's inner animal, doing little to distinguish between men and beasts. Crowds at prizefights are "a pack of bloodthirsty crazies waving dollar bills", while Sam, a sex addict, likens his attitude to women to a cowboy's attitude to horses in a western movie: "I cherish the nature of horses – hardworking, reliable, docile. But alla them is that way. Can always find y'self another horse."
Instinct pulses through the collection, reminding us that, for Davidson, nature is a stronger force than nurture. In "Life in the Flesh", a prizefighter sees no escape from his calling to fight ("The pureness of it all. I knew I'd never escape… You can't outrun this life").
Davidson has immense awareness of the human body, showing it at its most extreme and with all its limitations, from the prizefighter's strategic understanding of his anatomy in the title story to the "broken penis" in "Friction" and the orca trainer whose leg is bitten off in "Rocket Ride". Their bodies are his characters' only currency, and they trade with them, regardless of the associated risks. Beauty exists in fearlessness, as the pitbull breeder remarks of his dogs: "There are creatures on this Earth upon whom the human frailties of pain, weakness, self-doubt exert no bearing."
The beauty of Rust and Bone lies in the author's ability to make poetic what is intrinsically hostile or distasteful; the "low bronze moon", the dog's "dewlap hung like tattered curtains", "the great liquid silence" and "veil of salt water" in the wake of the orca trainer's accident. Davidson's landscape is damaged and his characters lack tenderness, making the glow of masterful prose shine all the brighter.
