A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World: A Novel
Written and Narrated By: C. A. Fletcher
Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
And this might show how easy an audience I am: I was taken by the twists at the end!
First of all: MANY thanks to all the reviewers who did NOT throw spoilers into their reviews! You have my sincerest of thanks.
Yup, I was all into A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, but there were a couple of parts that dragged enough to where my attention wandered. And I’m wholly without shame in that I sometimes, with that wandering mind, let my attention drift to what other reviewers say to tell me whether I’m in for more plodding, whether things get better. I KNOW! I’m totally pathetic!
So I was mightily heartened by several of them mentioning twists at the end, and that kept my curiosity going enough to get through some parts of slow-going.
It’s like this see: A plague hit humankind, and it was called the Gelding as it has for all intents and purposes deeeeeply curtailed procreation abilities. Young Griz, our hero, is one of the few children to be born in this world, and he and his family live on a remote island where they fend for themselves, creating where they need to, getting by as fairly well, all things considered. That is, all is well until a red-bearded and laughing stranger sails to their home. He trades things he’s found from empty communities, offering to make deals with Griz’s father on the morrow. Well, the morrow comes, and it turns out this jolly stranger has drugged the family and has taken what he needs and is now off in his sailing vessel. Griz, who couldn’t partake of poisoned marmalade due to a toothache, discovers it all, and he’s discovered the man also has stolen his female dog, Jess.
Without a moment’s hesitation, hearing Jess’s frantic yips and barks, he and his male dog, Jip, make it to his own little boat, and they hightail it off to follow the thief.
So the book is all about encounters with the thief, and more often, making their way through empty communities, through nature reclaiming its own, in an effort to get to the thief’s next stop. They have many adventures along the way, but sometimes they have none, and the book is all musings about what civilization pre-Gelding must’ve been like. There’s quite a bit o’ plod, but I liked Griz well-enough to carry on with his journey (EsPECially since twists were promised… did I mention how shallow I am…?), and I dearly love it when a character does the right thing, takes the maybe more arduous path, all to help their best companion. There are several times that things go awry, and there’s a bit where good and faithful Jip is put in danger, so that held my attention also, not to mention that it very much played my ol’ heartstrings.
The best parts of the story were when (By the way, the story is told through a journal as written to a long-dead boy found in a photo) Griz ponders and philosophizes. Discovering a peach for the first time, taking a long and sweet bite of it, gets him to thinking of how very wonderful this world of nothing is: So lacking in “stuff” that there are many, many opportunities to take that First Bite, that First Something, discovering things and experiencing life in a way where all comes alive for that very first time. He thinks of the boy in the photo and grieves that that boy was probably soooo used to soooo much in his life that he’ll never have the delights that, say, that first peach was. There are plenty of comparisons between what Life Back Then (Read: OUR Now) was and how different, how possibly better, a life less fraught with Everything can be.
There’s a wonderful part where Griz comes upon another person, this in a world where one simply doesn’t see other people, and he’s taken by this because it’s such a surprise but also because dad-blast it, wouldn’t ya know: The woman and he don’t speak the same language. They make do, and the writing is lovely as they go from wary foes to boon companions. And there’s always Jip, so my Animal hankerings were satisfied.
Less favorable were those times when things were soooo cerebral, so lacking in action. And I’m not sure whether I appreciated that author C. A. Fletcher kept writing in and boldly stating his own foreshadowing. There were so very many times where Griz says something and tacks onto his sentence that little did he know, it would incite chaos, be his downfalls, cause grief. I mean, that all did pique my interest and keep me going, but at the same time, it kinda sorta seems like cheap and easy writing.
Not so cheap and easy were the twists at the end which happen BANG! one right after the other. I honestly didn’t see them coming, but I admit that, even knowing there were twists to look out for, I wasn’t all super-eagle-eyed and hyper vigilant, just waiting to have my socks knocked off. I further admit that my socks weren’t exaaaactly knocked off, the twists weren’t all mega-exciting like that, but I definitely thought they added a nice layer to what was simply said boy with said dog, trying to find a much-loved companion whilst traversing a world he hadn’t much experience with.
Fletcher does an admirable job with the narration; not everybody should narrate their own work. He takes all the in-the-head musings and elevates it to high philosophy. Plus, all those bits of foreshadowing? Well, it was very well-done in that he turned it all into dread-inducing fodder.
A grand audiobook, and yeh yeh yeh, I’ll stop with the plodding bits but will embrace the good parts instead, shall I? Good story of being a good friend, treating one’s companions as family rather than as commodities or lost opportunities. It made me like Griz and respect how he sometimes went off all harum-scarum at times.
Plus, there was always Jip… and that’s good enough for me!
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.