The Dog Stars

As post-apocalyptic stories go, The Dog Stars is a good one. Instead of dwelling on how the civilized world ended, Peter Heller’s debut novel jumps in and tells us about how the protagonist, Hig, is surviving and coping. (Think The Road by Cormac McCarthy but much less dark…) As the NPR review of the book states, “Getting over it already is the challenge facing Hig(…)”

This is not an especially complex story — though I don’t want to spoil any of it by summarizing — but the characters are interesting and the writing is very good. I can only describe the writing as exactly how someone at the end of the world, who gives not one shit about grammar and punctuation anymore, would write his story.

The Dog Stars is a good, quick read and I already can’t wait to put another Peter Heller story in my reading queue.