The Dog Stars

By: Peter Heller

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss - and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life - something like his old life - exists beyond the airport.

Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return - not enough fuel to get him home - following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face - in the people he meets, and in himself - is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.

Narrated by a man who is part warrior and part dreamer, a hunter with a great shot and a heart that refuses to harden, The Dog Stars is both savagely funny and achingly sad, a breathtaking story about what it means to be human.

©2012 Peter Heller (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Richly evocative yet streamlined journal entries propel the high-stakes plot while simultaneously illuminating Hig's nuanced states of mind as isolation and constant vigilance exact their toll, along with his sorrow for the dying world.... Heller's surprising and irresistible blend of suspense, romance, social insight, and humor creates a cunning form of cognitive dissonance neatly pegged by Hig as an apocalyptic parody of Norman Rockwell...a novel, that is, of spiky pleasure and signal resonance." ( Booklist)

"In the tradition of postapocalyptic literary fiction such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Jim Crace's The Pesthouse, this hypervisceral first novel by adventure writer Heller ( Kook) takes place nine years after a superflu has killed off much of mankind.... With its evocative descriptions of hunting, fishing, and flying, this novel, perhaps the world's most poetic survival guide, reads as if Billy Collins had novelized one of George Romero's zombie flicks. From start to finish, Heller carries the reader aloft on graceful prose, intense action, and deeply felt emotion." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Leave it to Peter Heller to imagine a post-apocalyptic world that contains as much loveliness as it does devastation. His likable hero, Hig, flies around what was once Colorado in his 1956 Cessna, chasing all the same things we chase in these pre-annihilation days: love, friendship, the solace of the natural world, the chance to perform some small kindness, and a good dog for a co-pilot. The Dog Stars is a wholly compelling and deeply engaging debut." (Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted)

Incredible story about redemption after apocolypse

This book was recommended to me multiple times and I brushed it off because it is not really my genre. Finally I had to tell my Mother, Fine! I will read the doggone book! I cannot imagine why I waited so long. This was a great story, Wonderful Narration of a beautifully written novel.

Great read, I enjoyed it immensly

Just enough aviation to keep it interesting for me, I liked the characters....especially the dog......

pleasantly surprised

I like to think I am a pretty good judge of books but this one was just a complete surprise. I was recommended it by family and was shocked at how invested in the story I got. Great read, definitely read it again with my kids when they are old enough.

Absolutely Stellar!

What a debut! Heller proves, WOW, he can write; and the fact that he creates a beautiful story of regeneration and hope against the background of such a bleak dystopian world makes this debut novel altogether stunning.

Nine years have passed since a virulent flu-like pandemic annihilated 99% of the population, or *The End.* Hig is in the 1%...a gnawing fact that keeps him searching for answers. All he knows about this new world--is what is in *the perimeter*, the area he can fly over in his primo '56 Cessna he calls *Beast,* the area before the point of no return (*PNR*) or when the fuel is emptied. He lives in an abandon subdivision, choosing to sleep under the stars (to avoid being attacked and trapped in a shelter) with his aging, much loved, cannine companion, Jasper, and his memories--memories he'd like to forget. Also in the perimeter is co-survivor, Bangley, an ornry old gun-packing survivalist/misanthrope, and a neighboring colony of friendly, but blood-sick, Mennonites. Together, Hig, Jasper, and Bangley have survived a day-to-day existence of loneliness and *necessary violence,* more like *an old married couple* than friends.They know that together is their only chance of survival, and that outside of the perimeter is certain death. The marauders are fellow survivors--what you would expect to crawl out if you threw humankind into a fighting pit--not rabid infected changelings or zombies, but brutal savage men -- this is a more believable apocalyptic world. Daily, Hig flys recon with Jasper perched in the co-pilot's seat on a stack of heirloom quilts..."The whole time I fly I talk to him, and it amuses me to no end that the whole time he pretends not to listen." Then one day he hears a voice over the radio transmitter that ignites in him another question...what is beyond the perimeter. The Dog Stars is the story of Hig's journey, both concretely and existentially.

Though Dog Stars is his debut, Heller is a gifted writer and story-teller. His style is choppy and blunt, but absolutely precise, and adds to the sense of an abbreviated world. Throughout, the book is powerfully emotional, you'll laugh and you'll cry (maybe even blubber like a baby...just saying) and I doubt you'll ever forget. Heller just intuitively knows how to connect with all the facets of the human spirit. Dog Stars is rich with prose that are at once beautifully intimate and simple, and as profound and gut wrenching as the post-apocalyptic setting. It speaks straight to your soul. Heller's descriptions of nature are breathtakingly beautiful. Narrator Mark Deakins does a remarkable job bringing this text to life with such profundity that I found myself often in awe of simple sentences, or consummed with the loneliness, or sometimes even on the edge of a stream looking for trout, surrounded by the scent of fir trees and sounds of the forest.

"Life and death lived inside each other. That's what occurred to me. Death was inside all of us, waiting for warmer nights, a compromised system, a beetle, as in the now dying black timber on the mountains. And life was inside death, virulent and insistent as a strain of flu. How it should be."

"Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don't mean unrequited love, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End."

This is more a story of a sensitive man's search for meaning (apologies to Frankl) than a post-apocalyptic tale--more Alas Babylon, Earth Abides, than McCarthy's depressing gem The Road. Though Hig mostly contemplates what drives a man to live when they have lost everything but their life, he still finds humor and beauty in this world, he still appreciates the wonder of nature, the desire for human connection, the glowing light of hope. I'm not sure if the ending was abrupt or whether I just regretted any ending--possibly both. The Dog Stars is everything I hope a book will be, highly entertaining, creative, evocative, the kind of book I'd gift or pass along. I think it will appeal to almost everyone, and may even linger on to become a classic. (There is some harsh language and violence that might cross this one off some people's list, but considering the subject--relatively little.) Best book I've read in a long while, and I can't wait to see what Peter Heller does next. Just stunning.

Compelling..

Another reader suggestion, and another hit. This one is abit erotic, abit violent, and a whole lot interesting. The story really doesn't go in any linear direction, but rather is a slice of post apocalpytic life, with a very complex narrator and associated characters.

I have been listening to quite a few of these types of "end times" books lately, and this one qualifies as "best of breed". Very definitely more of a psychological study, and a good one at that.

Needless to say, highly recommended.

Pure Poetry

One of those books better in audible format than written not because the text version would leave something to be desired but because the performance was so outstanding.

Memorizing /Hypnotic

Where does The Dog Stars rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

On a very rare occasion a book and the perfect reader connect. This is one of those books.

Theme makes no sense

I liked this book but had a problem with basic premise. It is set in the future where the world is basically depopulated. The remaining people spend the entire book killing each other. Man is basically a social animal. There is no benefit to having the entire population working to eliminate each other when there are unlimited resources. The main characters are lonely but spend the entire booking shooting everyone who comes within miles of them. Where everything else seems limited they seem to have an unlimited supply of bullets but limited supply of coke. There is interwoven a theme of drought caused by global warming, but 99% of the world has been dead for a decade. So who is causing global warming?

Great story, but RIP headphone users.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The story is quite interesting, and the narration is like a radio performance with background music, etc. The characters go from whispering and speaking softly to screams and loud noises and mood music. This makes it nearly impossible, or at least quite unpleasant, for one to listen to with headphones.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

I'd prefer a traditional narration to the screaming and loud mood music.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Yes.

Very Good

Where does The Dog Stars rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Top 15

What other book might you compare The Dog Stars to and why?

A much better version of The Road by Cormac McCarthy...not to knock CM....I loved some of his other novels.

Which scene was your favorite?

When Hig is walking into the perimeter with the villians on his tail, and Bangley uses the radio to get him through.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes. It made me pay more attention to my dog, Sonny. It made me realize how much I appreciate him as a real companion.

Any additional comments?

Not a plot driven book...but really...Such great writing and narration.