THE DOG STARS
By Peter Heller
Knopf, 2012, ISBN:
978-0307959942
* * * *
If you’re a fan of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic The Road, you’re likely to enjoy Peter
Heller’s The Dog Stars. Like
McCarthy, Heller sets his novel in the near future, just a few years after the world
has gone horribly wrong. In this case, a flu-like pandemic has wiped out much
of the world’s population—think the Doomsday scenarios associated with
outbreaks such as SARS, AIDS, swine flu, and the West Nile virus. Entire cities
die, governments collapse, most wildlife is extinct or endangered, and the law
of the jungle prevails. Heller isn’t likely to be elected a future president of
the Optimists Society. In his bleak world, survivors do not bond or cooperate;
the world degenerates into vicious tribalism. The astute thing to do is kill
anyone entering your compound rather than risk that that person is a disease
carrier. Moreover, in this Malthusian nightmare in which resources of all sort
are dwindling, chances are better that a wayward visitor is part of a murderous
gang seeking to capture one’s food and supplies. Or so our protagonist, Hig, is
told repeatedly by camo-wearing Bangley, the crusty old coot with whom he
shares a fortified compound on the edge of an airport that once served a slice
of Colorado Yuppie suburbia.
Bangley knows weaponry like the back of his hand and he’s
handy with all manner of tools and machines. He might be a crafty survivalist,
a psycho, or a hybrid of both, but if there’s such a thing as an apocalyptic
Odd Couple, he and Hig are it. Hig has the heart of a tragic poet. He is
haunted by his wife’s death some nine years earlier and yearns for the days in
which he fished trout from Colorado streams. There are just two things that
keep him going, the companionship of his ageing dog Jasper, and at least
ten-years’ worth of usable aero gas for the Cessena he uses to get forage for
supplies and search for something, anything, else that might be within a tank
full’s range. In fact, he and Jasper take periodic hikes into the mountains,
just to smell the pines, shoot the occasional deer, and fish for about all
that’s left in the rivers: bottom-dwelling suckers. Bangley thinks he’s a damned fool, and he might be right.
This is a novel about isolation, loneliness, and the nature
of humanity. What is it that makes us human? Bangley thinks it’s a full stomach
and a secure perimeter, but Hig is pretty sure that humans need something
beyond the mere gratification of physical needs. We pretty much know from the
outset that the Cessena is the book’s Chekov’s gun, and that Hig will
eventually head out to see if he can rediscover his own humanity. Some of the
ensuing adventures are terrifying, some deeply affecting, others highly
improbable, and a few a bit hackneyed. But it’s hard to escape thinking about
the question that occupies Hig: If life were reduced to its bare rudiments,
what would any one of us need to differentiate ourselves from a dog or a trout?
Do I make this book sound a bit like The Road collided with A River
Runs Through It? That wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, but The Dog Stars has enough original spark
to make it more than a derivative mash-up. For a post-apocalyptic novel whose
title riffs off a star constellation, Jasper, the heavens, and flight (of
various sorts) it also contains–dare I say it?–a lot of humanity. –Rob Weir
No comments:
Post a Comment