God Is Dead (original 2007; edition 2007)

fascinating, grim, funny and hard to forget. One of the best short story collections masquerading as a novel I have read. Not every piece is perfect on its own, but as an arc they manage to create a post-God world that is real and frightening without resorting to the same dystopian nonsense we've seen before. A great companion piece to Coupland's Life After God, but more powerful. ( )

You wouldn't think of the situations in this book, considering the title. Most of them, at least. A wonderful exercise that brings out interesting things from ye olde human nature. ( )

I bought this book at Christmas time, and I very nearly put it back on the shelf because the cover appalled me. It features a dog sitting outside a cage. Inside the cage is another dog, curled up in a miserable little pile. I couldn’t tell if the caged dog was dead or asleep and not knowing made it worse. In fact, just thinking about the picture is making my stomach hurt a little. I cannot abide it when bad things happen to animals. This reaction taints a lot of my interaction with the world. I bought a Jack Ketchum book knowing full well the plot begins with the death of a dog and even so, I had to stop reading it. I just couldn’t take it. I hope Rugero Deodato, if there is an afterlife, spends a few years getting smacked around by a very large turtle and a couple of very angry pigs. So of course, given this tender-hearted tendency of mine coupled with my perverse desire to torture myself, I had to buy this book that featured a potentially dead dog on the cover being mourned by one of his own.

My instincts were right. This book was going to break my heart and I knew it before I opened it. The plot of this book is a cliche, a hackneyed conversation every wine-cooler and cheap beer-filled college freshman has had: what would happen if God died? But despite the fact that the premise is not original, this book is surprisingly fresh and frightening, at turns tender and sickening, hopeful and horrible. While there were elements that did not work as well as others, the fearlessness in which Currie approaches this story allows me to overlook its weaker parts. Read my entire discussion here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/god-is-dead-by-ron-currie-jr/ ( )

This is a strange book of interconnected short stories. The first tale describes God taking human form as a refugee in Darfur and his death when the human body is killed. The rest of the stories answer some questions, such as how the world finds out God is dead, and describe how humanity reacts (quite poorly) and then how civilization recovers and what form it takes. Not a pretty picture. There's a very funny portrayal of Colin Powell, and a priceless one-sided interview with the lone survivor of the feral dogs who ate God's dead body and could then speak and think and feel as a human and had all-encompassing knowledge. Entertaining, interesting, odd. ( )

God has decided to see the suffering in Darfur for himself, and to do so, he takes on the form of a young Dinka woman, who is caught up in the war. In assuming this form, God has also to take on the mortality and frailties of humans, and is killed in the conflict. When his real identity is uncovered, the news that God is dead spreads throughout the globe, causing civil unrest, anarchy, wars and the breakdown of society.

This book is less a novel, and more a series of vaguely interlinked stories about how the world reacts to God’s death. Certain parts tell what life was like after the initial hysteria following the news died down, but all of the tales tell a story of how ordinary lives were affected.

The writing is imaginative, and the stories which unfold in this tale are disturbing, satirical, ironic and at times very amusing. The author seems to shine a light on human flaws and strengths and shows the sort of behaviour that people will display in times of terror and uncertainty.

The book flowed easily, and although the stories within it are only loosely linked, it never felt disjointed – I realised that I was reading big chunks in almost no time at all.

I would definitely recommend this book, especially to fans of dystopian fiction. ( )