The Dog Stars

The book seemed vaguely familiar... or maybe it reminded me of the Margaret Atwood books, the Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake... I like those books, but did not feel that way about this one.

I could not connect to this book. Maybe I have been watching too much scifi tv but it just seemed like another end of the world story and I was just not that interested this time in the virus or the scary stuff.
It also reminded me of the Kunstler book -- World Made by Hand. This was a better book although the end of the world had a different cause. ( )

For a post-apocalyptic setting this was really more of an internal story than about the end of the world. I liked it but there wasn't enough dog.

A good friend recommended The Dog Stars by Peter Heller for my book club. At first, I thought, Oh, no, another apocalyptic, dystopian novel! Then I faced another obstacle. A peculiar style – sentence fragments, and something like a focused stream of consciousness. In other words, the narrator jots down words and phrases to tell the story of an earth devastated by an outbreak of flu closely followed by a mysterious blood disease which killed millions. As I became accustomed to the style, I found the story so absorbing, I could barely put it down.

Hig is a pilot, and he flies “The Beast” -- an old Cessna manufactured in the 1950s. He lives near an airport with supplies of aviation fuel, tools, and parts to keep The Beast flying an 8-mile radius around the perimeter looking for wandering bands of survivors. He takes these trips with his beloved companion, Jasper. Hig has a soft spot for a family of Mennonites who live a few miles away. The family is infected with “The Blood,” and when Hig visits to give them some food and medical supplies, he stays 15 feet away and never touches any of the children.

Hig shares this airport residence with Bangley, who has a military mindset and an impressive collection of weapons – both small and large. He is justly paranoid and encounters with wanderers turn deadly. He tries to convince Hig to be more aggressive when wanderers appear, and he also has a slightly distrustful eye always on Hig.

I can’t say much more without giving away the twists in the plot and the suspenseful flight Hig takes to track down a mysterious signal he receives from an airport just at the edge of The Beast’s range, but here is a sample of Heller’s style.

“If I ever woke up crying in the middle of a dream, and I’m not saying I did, it’s because the trout are gone every one. Brookies, rainbows, browns, cutthroats, cutbows, every one. The tiger left, the elephant, the apes, the baboon, the cheetah. The titmouse, the frigate bird, the pelican (gray), the whale (gray), the collared dove. Sad but. Didn’t cry until the last trout swam upriver looking for maybe cooler water” (3).

My friend provided a series of questions as launching points for a book club discussion. One interesting question involved the significance of the title, and it occurred to me that perhaps the word “stars” in the title is not a noun but a verb. I won’t go any further with this thought, because I do not want to give away any of the plot.

The Dog Stars is my first encounter with Peter Heller and his first novel. He has also written non-fiction works on surfing, whales, and travelogues on China and Tibet. I rarely read this kind of non-fiction, but Heller has made me travel-curious. 5 stars

--Chiron, 5/3/13 ( )

This was enjoyable. The prose was great and some of the characters were well drawn. I particularly enjoyed the bits about fishing and flying his plane. The story was very credible, but the story arc itself was not that compelling.

The book reminded me of something I read in high school that also involved a pilot in an "after the illness" apocalypse. It was called "The Last Canadian". ( )

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss—and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life—something like his old life—exists beyond the airport. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return—not enough fuel to get him home—following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face—in the people he meets, and in himself—is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.

Narrated by a man who is part warrior and part dreamer, a hunter with a great shot and a heart that refuses to harden, The Dog Stars is both savagely funny and achingly sad, a breathtaking story about what it means to be human.

My Review: I've tried and I've tried to think of a nice way to say that I don't like Iowa Writer's Workshop stuff because it's always Very Writerly. I was, as you see, unsuccessful. It's always full of good lines, it's always got charming or beautiful or moving imagery and characters with flaws and sometimes even dialogue with some zest.

But it's always Very Writerly. Thick and heavy and nutritious like spelt or brown rice. Sulphur molasses in gluten-free muffins. Serious and Good For You.

I hate that. Sorry, Mr. Heller, but that's you all over.

I like dystopias and post-apocalyptic stories, since I am the least chirpily optimistic person walking on Planet Earth. I want them to make sense, however, and not be rehashes of zombie munch-fests. This one makes sense. The pandemic that collapses the population? Totally buy that. The evil/vile behavior of the humans afterwards? Totally buy that. (Actually, from what I see, we haven't waited for an apocalypse to behave like scum to each other. But I digress.) The source of the dog Jasper's jerky treats? Brilliant, and also very frugal.

I like the story, too, up to the point where Hig, our pilot main character, flies off and Finds Himself. I know, I know, all characters must go through stuff and change as a result of it to make a novel really interesting. But the fact that Hig goes off'n gits him a woman is a little over the top. It's artificial feeling, like something inside Heller (or an editor outside Heller) said "there's no hope! give the poor bastard hope!"

It was, in my humble opinion, a wrong turn. The story up to then was an interesting, stream-of-consciousness exploration of an average joe who, inexplicably, survived the Apocalypse and kept on moving, breathing, numb from loss and scared, but real. And then, suddenly, he gets A Message and has to move move move to find the source! And he finds him a gal! Who knows, maybe that little impotence problem will clear up, they'll have a family....

That's not the same book I started reading, and I don't much like that book.

But in good conscience, I can't tell you it's a bad book. It's a pretty good book that could've been a really, really good book. It takes the subverbal vocalizations of its main character and puts them front-and-center, makes the style the point, makes the point the pleasure of reading. I just have this one little problem with the whole enterprise: It feels to me like it's been overthought, overwrought, and overworked. All down to that workshoppy aesthetic, and that happyendingitis that comes from thinking about the audience and not the story.

Well, so. Three and a half stars for the good, good phrases Mr. Heller has made and the promise of that first half. It will do. ( )