The Dog Stars
By: Peter Heller / Narrated By: Mark Deakins
Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
Question: Is this a good story because of Mark Deakins, or in spite of Mark Deakins…?
But before we get to the narration, something of a disclosure: I have NOT read/listened to The Road, and I’m baaaarely getting into the whole thing of post apocalyptic novels. We’ve got a few here on the site, but it’s only now that we’re living in the Age of COVID-19 that I’ve come to appreciate that writers and readers have been dreaming up this stuff and devouring it for years.
Hig is our hero. He, along with his much-loved dog Jasper, survived a (Ostensibly global) pandemic which killed off, like, over 90% of humanity. They live in an old hangar where he can sleep out under the stars and guard his adored Cessna, which he uses to scout “the perimeter” where he and the only other person he knows on the planet, Bangley, live. Bangley is a total survivalist, shoot-first, don’t bother with questions later, all-humans-are-scavengers and need to be killed kinda guy. It’s to the point where Hig doesn’t tell Bangley that old Jasper has gone deaf with the passing of the years because Bangley might see the dog as a drain on resources and demand a death sentence. Rather, Hig lauds Jasper as a warning system, that the dog’s keeeen senses will give them a heads up should he hear, or smell, intruders; he’s a boon to their community of two, and he’s earning his keep.
The book is lauded as near perfection by some; dismissed as boring and faultily written by others. I dunno, but I kinda liked the writing style and found it engaging, even if I didn’t find it a breathtaking treatise on what it’s like to be alive in a world spinning slowly towards the death of everything once held dear. It’s a stream of conscious sort of tale as Hig considers what he’s lost, his wife, his home, and nature is being dealt a blow. Through it all, he ponders, he loves Jasper, he creates new constellations for himself out of old stars in the night sky.
And after immense loss, he’s driven to take a chance on an old message he received during a flight years ago. Does he have hope? Or is he simply running from a life made unbearable, from a “friend” who quietly watches his every move, who assesses, judges harshly? Who could condemn to death.
This is where I question the narration. Cuz Mark Deakins has smooth, unruffled tones, even as he conveys scenes of violence and horror. Does the smoothness diminish the tale, or does it show Hig’s numbness, his thoughts as they transition one to another to another to another, flowing constantly and effortlessly? I’d say the former, but Hig’s musings of life are made from a brain made numb by loss and a lack of love and purpose. Still, to give Deakins his total due: He has Bangley pegged square on. This guy, whom I took to be rather a condemnatory and despicable stereotype, winds up, through author Heller’s skilled writing and through Deakins’s flair for dialogue, becoming a character who grows on you until you find yourself outright cheering for the odd man. Deakins has a real knack for the dialogue in this book, which might not be saying much considering there are only so many characters you can portray in a novel about mere remnants of mankind.
Hope is considered, and even though I wasn’t floored by the book, I wound up coming away wishing there was a sequel. Yessss, it ends that well, with a sort of sunshine and flowers even as all around is death and chaos.
I liked the writing style, and I appreciated the flow the narration maaaaay’ve added to it. And I liked the image of Hig looking up into the night sky, seeing a wonderful world lost, a wonderful world, albeit however temporarily, by his side.
Can you have a post apocalyptic novel end with such hope? Welllll, from what I’ve listened to thus far in my limited and only recent capacity as connoisseur of all things post-pandemic, most aim for a hopeful overtone (I guess anything else would leave the reader/listener wanting to gnaw through their wrists). But with The Dog Stars, it didn’t end so much with a Happily Ever After as it did with a MOST enticing:
What’s next…?
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