The Dog Stars

De: Peter Heller

Narrado por: Mark Deakins

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

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.

Really bleak but a vivid reality

Narration was very good and clear. Story sometimes gets a bit flowery and some events seem improbably convenient. But, a good read.

Who doesn’t love apocalypse with a dog?

Different type of story, feel good apocalypse story, but still had death killing and hard decisions.Absolutely loved it. Really loved the characters. Is there going to be a second book?

Incredible use of language and knowledgeable about so many things

Everything excellent performance compelling story incredibly beautiful soulful writing. Heller is obviously a man of nature who knows how to capture the many nuances that nature holds.

Simple, poetic, and hopeful take on post apocalyptic human existence.

I love the aviation aspect, I love the Colorado setting, I love the beautiful prose. The small scope and sparse action feel so genuine, when compared to many sensational representations of post apocalyptic life. A man, his dog, and his pursuit of meaning in an empty world.

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.