There’s been a lot of dystopian fiction around lately, perhaps it’s something in the air. Economies crashing, banks failing… nothing new to be said there that hasn’t been said before. A lot of it is brilliant. Aside from the success that The Hunger Games has garnered since the release of the film, there have been other brilliant contributions, including the viscerally compelling, Pure by Julianna Baggott. However, dystopia seems, like so many other genres, to have been stolen by the teen market as successfully as Vampires, fairy tales and music festivals.
It’s been a relief, to read a recent novel which writes about a dystopian world, with adults very much in its sights. There have, of course, been plenty of pre-cursors. The Road is often cited as the best modern exponent of the genre. I’m more of a fan of the dystopian future worlds of Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake being my favourite over The Handmaid’s Tale) and further back John Wyndham. There is something about their being so very close to a current world point, so very near to where we currently are that lends them a particularly affecting sense of foreboding and realism.
That may be precisely why I found Peter Heller’s novel The Dog Stars so affecting and such an absorbing read. In some ways it’s wilderness, survival feel reminded me of a book I read as a young adult, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen – a book about a boy who finds himself stranded in the Canadian wilderness. Much of this book is about loneliness and interiority. The main character, Hig, is a simple man, he likes to fish and cook, whistle and fly his plane. He is surviving as best he can in the aftermath of a situation too huge for him to comprehend or fathom. He and his one surviving neighbour and his dog, Jasper, live on an abandoned airfield. Hig flies on reconnaissance missions and together the two men patrol the perimeter, locking themselves off from the hostile outside world and the ‘blood plague’ that has infected much of the surviving population. But as much as it is a book about survival it is also about how life is so much more than that. When Hig decides to follow a distant, crackling radio message with only fuel enough to get him one way he is admitting that life is only lived when it is beyond surviving.
So much of the strength of this book lies in its descriptions of frailty, thinly disguised grief and half-understanding. Heller gets deep into the psyche of characters who can barely believe, let alone fully contemplate their own situation or their own past. The slow re-awakening to grief and the possibility of future human contact is a painful but ultimately restorative process. The understanding that all life is about risk, loss and reconciliation is beautifully transposed to the page. I found myself often deeply moved but it was a pleasure to find the drama of a frightening world counter-balanced with such commonplace and recognisable human hope
There are flaws to the plotting of this novel and some of the later passages are hurried over – I actually found myself thinking it could have been longer (something I rarely find to be the case – I’m more often wishing for a more stringent editor). Heller is so good on the internal workings of Hig’s mind that when he comes out of himself to interact with others, the writing is more jolted and less fluent. Nevertheless, this novel is thoroughly engaging and wrought with powerful emotional intensity running under the surface of people who are made meaningful through their very ordinariness. The passage where Hig sees himself in a mirror for the first time in years and doesn’t recognise the reflection, makes the reader start as much as he does – a credit to the extent to which Heller makes you feel involved with his protagonist’s thoughts and self-image.
This is an example of really good writing, simply executed. Not a teen hunk or smooth-skinned, floaty haired heroine in sight and all the richer and better for it.
To Capture the Castle 