This is what I call a good cover. I can look at it, read the jacket, and know that I’ll like it. The base elements are: post-SHTF, flying, dog as a companion, apocalyptic survivors. Leastways this is how its presented. It was recommended to me at a book shop near the boat. Must’ve been the living in those cramped, isolated conditions that really put me in a mood for post-apocalyptic fare. I bought up a few different ones aside. Didn’t even get to read it until I was off the harbor and in a place of solid walls. Not that I read there, either. Train commute to work’s the only place I can muster it.
The Road came out a few years back now and its inevitable to compare any post-SHTF scenario about lonesome survivors with that book. McCarthy’s delivered such a solid punch in the gut with his story that there’s no forgetting it. Heller’s book isn’t quite the same in the level of bleakness, which is something I dig. Hopelessness makes hope shine all the brighter. But he ventures into some of that despair early on. I reckon the first half, perhaps a bit more. It’s all set-up for the end, in hindsight. That’s a way to think of it, ain’t it? Waiting for a punchline plain as day. The early story’s focus is on Hig the protagonist, his dog buddy Jasper, and his survival buddy Bangley. Hig’s got some of the sensitivity of a poet hunter, naturally, and his dog’s a pitch perfect man’s best friend. Easy to tell that the author channels himself into the man. Bangley’s the foil, but also a bridge between Hig’s civilized man and the few people who scour the land in search of food, shelter. No different from any other human in this world. As unlikeable as Bangley gets, he’s on Hig’s side, and of course your side as the reader. Hig says it himself: “He was giving me a pep talk. It was working. Goddamn Bangley.” A vile dude, but you’re grateful as hell to have him around, and wary of ever crossing someone like him.
The emotional layer later in the story rubbed me the wrong way on account of a meeting with a woman and a build-up to sex scenes that is lacking in subtlety. Badly written sex leaves a mark on a story. But it passes, and I don’t begrudge them some tenderness and companionship given the place these characters are in. Just has that contrived sense to it. I say more and I spoil it rotten, but suffice to say, it stuck. Like meat fibers between molars. Just think of the Queen and it’ll pass.
That comparison to The Road is what does me in about it. I can’t get over the way that story goes, and the way this story doesn’t. Like one kind of apple compared to another, and the aftertaste. Time and distance from it ought to help sort things out. Best I can say anyway is it’s good enough for a second read. That short stack of stories worth revisiting.