The Dog Stars

It's been nine years since a super-flu pandemic essentially wiped out the world, but Hig has survived. He lives at what was once a small airport in Colorado with a gun nut he maybe can't exactly call his friend, his aging dog, and a small plane that he still flies regularly, even though there are a very limited number of places to go.

This is definitely on the literary end of the post-apocalyptic subgenre, full of all kinds of highly affecting emotion: pain, grief, numbness, hope. The writing is terrific, in a way that calls to mind the old adage that you can break all the rules, if you know what you're doing. Heller very much knows what he's doing, and he makes this feel, for the most part, like an effortlessly believable look inside show more his character's head.

I will say that I found the first half or so of the novel better than the second half, just because when Hig finally meets some other human beings, there's something about them that doesn't ring quite as true to me as Hig and his partner-in-survival do. Which is probably the only reason I'm giving this four and a half stars instead of the rarely-bestowed five. show less

I listened to this one on audiobook and that probably was the way to do it. I read a few reviews in advance and noted that one reviewer found the language usage and syntax jarring and unsettling to the point that it detracted from their enjoyment of the book. In listening, I can see that because the prose is conversational rather than literary. If not listening to an audiobook I would have been tempted to read aloud. Sounds weird, but that is the way this book is written.

Loved it. Amazing story. Good characters and a great dog. Heartbreaking, nerve-racking, and beautiful. Heller writes like a great American writer like Hemingway---especially in his deeply spiritual connection with the sports life of hunting and fishing. I kept thinking show more of “Big Two-Hearted River” as I listened. The narrator is more modern than Hemingway, who would not have spent nearly as much time contemplating the reasons for his actions, and more time just getting on with the action of the story.

This novel dives deeply into fishing, flying small airplanes, hunting, how magical it is to have a really good dog as a companion, the nature of love and loss, killing another human being, and deliberately going beyond the point of no return just to see what is there. Pretty literary stuff, but the story is told in the context of a violent post apocalyptic world and has several edge of the seat white knuckle situations that had me waiting in the car after I got to my destination just to see how it all came out.

Not many novels are this well written yet this exciting at the same time. 5 stars. One of the year’s favorites for me. show less

I really liked this book, but I have to say it left with the feeling someone punched me in the stomach. It is poetic. It is engaging. The sex scenes are hot without being affected. (Some other reviewer called them “wet sex”, well… “dry sex” is not fun, is it?) Yet, yet…

Maybe what bother me the most was the presence of not one, but two Rambo like characters? In a story with 5 characters – counting the dog – to have two characters so much alike that they are interchangeable is bad enough, but that these mirror image characters are gun toting, navy seals, covert operative types, seemed like lazy character development from an author that seem to have a lot more potential than this.

It does make me think that the hidden show more message here is: We cannot survive without the help of gun loving, ruthless big man, trained by the military to protect us. Even when they are shooting at young girls wielding a kitchen knife or 9 year old sickly boys, they are really guaranteeing that we – the good guys – have a future.

I cannot avoid thinking of the heated debate over gun control in the USA right now. As a Canadian citizen some may not think it is my place to even brush into this debate, but hearing of machine gun killings in elementary schools – anywhere in the world – makes my heart skip a beat. And, as someone looking in from outside, why do American movies and books keep on perpetuating this narrative that only machine guns and grenades will save the good way of life. “Never, never negotiate” this is the motto.

As I write this I realize that I cannot give any stars to this book. To give less stars on account of my political perceptions would negate the lovely prose, the insightful musings on nature, life, love and death. Then, to give 4 or 5 stars would make me feel as if I backed what I perceived as a dangerous message here.

The funny thing is just a couple of hours ago I recommended this book to a friend. Actually, thinking of it, I would still highly recommend this book. But I hope that it would lead to a debate on the covert messages we acquire and internalize.

Some reviewers peg this book as a “more optimistic dystopia than The Road”. I actually think it is more disturbing than ‘The Road”. A more optimistic view would require that character Rambo #2 became an agriculture expert, or a leading scientist, or a librarian… someone with more to offer to a new generation of survivors than tactical military expertise.

Oh! You don’t agree with me… it is simple: Shoot me! show less

Whoa. This amazing book, which demands to be read s-l-o-w-l-y (due to Heller's inspired choice to subtly alter the protagonist's language, to reflect the fact that he's had almost no-one to talk to in nine years), is a perfect blend of the end-of-the-world brutality of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, with the loveliness of Nevil Shute's On the Beach. Extraordinary, realistic, and profoundly moving.

The doomsday narrative is a tired one. Pick your poison on how the world ends: asteroids, killer viruses, alien invasion, zombies. All have their day in the world of fiction, not to mention in movies and television shows. I wasn't really sure what to expect from Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, except that it was different.

In The Dog Stars, it's an epidemic that decimates the world, killing off 99 percent or so of the human population. Nothing special there. But wait.

The book starts with our protagonist, Higs, barricaded in a compound with his dog, Jasper, and a humorously rancorous neighbor, Bangley, a loner who is good with guns and shows no mercy, a survivalist type. Higs and Bangley spend their days fortifying their compound, making show more sure they have enough provisions—gathered from a small vegetable garden tended by Higs and whatever they can hunt, deer and elk. The banter is sharp between these two men and their interaction is one of the touching aspects of the book. Bangley is largely a misanthrope but Higs still holds on to something—it's not hope per se, but a view of the world that is still quaintly earnest, poetic, given the horrors. He sees beauty even as the world has slipped into a barbaric state.

It's a luminous world Heller paints. It is the end of times and yet the end is rich and full of beauty and grace. Heller is a nature/environmental writer and his descriptions of the natural world are evocative. Example: "[The moss] is dry and light to the touch, almost crumbly, but in the trees it moves like sad pennants." It's almost as if a world purged of humans is actually a purer, more beautiful one. As Bangley says, "We are like kings. It took the end of the world."

But don't assume this book is just a collection of sensitive ruminations about loss and survival. There is plenty of combat and violence, too—the gun-toting and club-wielding kind from raiders and wandering gangs of pillaging, raping brutes that regularly assail Higs and Bangley. The latter half of the book has a few battles/showdowns that are breathtaking. Oh yeah, Higs is also a pilot. His trips in his Cessna produce some of the most devastatingly beautify commentary on the world. Bird's eye view, searching, ever searching. The book's narrative arc is really about Higs looking for and finding others—and the cost of that.

For all intents and purposes, the world has ended. It's a testament to Heller's writing that he can give us a post-apocalyptic story that is so beautifully rendered. If you don't like fragmented writing, this may be hard to get through, but I say let the rhythm wash over you. This odd style is used to mimic our narrator's thoughts and the fractured state of the world to great effect.

Poetry is mentioned a lot. These are the protagonist's favorites and mine, too:

When Will I Be Home
Li Shang-Yin, 9th century AD

When will I be home? I don't know.
In the mountains, in the rainy night,
The Autumn lake is flooded.
Someday we will be back together again.
We will sit in the candlelight by the West window.
And I will tell you how I remembered you
Tonight on the stormy mountain.

Li Po

I lift my head from the pillow
I see the frost the moon.
Lowering my head I think of home. show less

First of all, this is another post-apocalyptic vision of the world. But, in the Dog Stars, the writing itself sets this book apart: the language is robust and experimental, with short machine gun like bursts and haiku-like prose. It is also dream-like and often beautiful. It is about loss and survival and hope and it scared me, made me cry, and sometimes gave me a laugh. There are no zombies, no vampires, no monsters...just us and we're terrifying enough. It's also a story about finding love in what seems a loveless world.It is about friendship between men when it seems all men must be feared. I love the part of the book that is about the bond between a man and a dog. There are some truly gruesome elements to the book and quite a bit of show more violence but there is also the beauty of the remaining natural world. It's streams, flowers, trees, and animals; all disappearing but in enough evidence to invoke nostalgia and appreciation. In the end this book is about what it really means to be a human in and of itself. Recommended to anyone but especially those who admire post-apocalyptic novels. show less

In The Dog Stars, Peter Heller’s debut novel published in 2012, we’re confronted by a post-apocalyptic hellscape in which humanity has been decimated by a flu-type virus, with many survivors subsequently killed off by a slow-wasting blood infection. Nine years ago Hig survived the pandemic and its fallout, but during spells of loneliness and despair it occurs to him to reflect on how and why, since his wife Melissa (who was carrying their unborn child) and his friends did not survive. But since he did survive, he figures to stay alive as long as possible, and to this end has taken up residence in an abandoned airport on the outskirts of a small Colorado town. A skilled outdoorsman and certified pilot, Hig often ventures into the show more nearby wilderness to hunt and fish, and he has a Cessna that, while fuel supplies last, he can use to scout the surrounding area for intruders. Other than his dog, Jasper, Hig’s only companion is another survivor, Bangley, a man of few words whose passion for weapons and sophisticated combat skills have saved their skin more than once. In the first half of the book, Peter Heller shows us Hig and Bangley at work defending their territory, and we follow Hig out into the woods where he bags some deer. In the novel’s second half Hig follows up on a suspicion that there might be other survivors he could connect with. Years earlier, before Bangley entered his life, Hig was in the Cessna when he received a voice signal while flying over a town many miles to the east and after much thought and soul-searching has convinced himself that, even after the passage of years, exploring the origin of that voice is a good idea. Hig’s adventure takes him into a mountainous region of the state where he comes across a father and daughter team—Cima and Pops—who have survived by living off the land and raising livestock. But with climate change the rivers and streams are drying up. Soon there won’t be enough water to sustain them, so they agree to join Hig on his journey back to his home airport, which will include a stop in the town where Hig first heard the mysterious voice and where he plans to fuel up. Hig’s philosophical musings about life and the natural world are instructive and, despite his manly self-sufficiency, reflect a disposition that is essentially romantic, and so it comes as no surprise that he and Cima form a close bond that turns physical. The Cima-Hig scenes elevate the novel’s emotional content, though after a while the reader begins wondering if they’ll ever get down to business. But Heller excels at writing action scenes, and this is where the novel really takes off: when bullets are flying and lives are on the line. There is no denying that The Dog Stars is suspenseful and populated by characters who come to matter. However, some commentators have noted that the writing style—a Hemingwayesque pastiche of sentence fragments and truncated half-thoughts—is off-putting. Let’s just say that once you accept the jerky rhythms of Heller’s prose as an expression of Hig’s laconic manliness, everything falls into place. show less