May 20, 2026 · Spencer Williams

Form is Function in Emily LaBarge’s “Dog Days”

The book is not at all interested in constructing a play-by-play of LaBarge’s family being held hostage by a group of six men. Rather, in trying, and failing, to turn the memory of The Event into a tangible thing to make sense of, LaBarge redirects, with elegance and precision, our attention to the shapelessness of memory itself, refusing to make clean the gaps and holes that rest alongside brief flashes of coherence.