Living with the Hyenas

Hyenas are scavengers and predators. They prey on the weak and the helpless and even their fellow predators, the lions. Like lions, the people in Robert Flynn’s stories learn to make accommodations to the hyenas and to a society that tolerates them. Sometimes accommodation is painful, as in “A Boy and His Dog,” the story of a Marine and his dog trained to sniff out mines and booby-traps in the Vietnam War.

Sometimes the process of accommodation is comic, bringing out Flynn’s characteristic wit, as in “At Play in the Sewers of the Lord,” which juxtaposes theology and sewage treatment. But most often Flynn's stories make us look at ourselves as they probe difficult subjects—the innate cruelty of children, our intolerance and lack of compassion for the elderly.

In the title story, the main character decides that if she could live with her husband for forty years, she surely could live with hyenas. Flynn’s characters teach us all to be heroes of accommodation.