A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Brand had stolen my dog and I had to try Griz is a boy living with his father, mother, big brother, big sister, and two terriers Jess and Jip on a small island in the Outer Hebrides near Scotland. It’s been well over a century after a “soft apocalypse” they call “the Gelding” rendered humans sterile or infertile, reducing the number of people in the world to, they calculate, less than ten thousand. Griz’s family lives by farming and fishing, supplementing their needs and interests by “going Viking” (scavenging through abandoned houses etc. on other islands) and by “Frankensteining” (cobbling usable machines etc. from various sources). There is no more electricity, and most science has been lost, though Griz’ father continues to “Leibowitz,” trying to maintain some scientific and technological knowledge. Griz had another older sister, Joy, but she fell from a cliff into the sea, which loss led to his mother falling and damaging her brain so she cannot speak. The only other people they know is a family called the Lewises who live on another island. Early in his story, Griz goes farther from home than ever before because of the visit of a stranger. Brand is a man with red boat sails, icy blue eyes, fiery red hair, a flashing smile, and a gift for telling stories. He says he’s a trader and an adventurer. But he’s also a liar and a thief, stealing Griz’ dog Jess. And because dogs are at least as rare as people (perhaps because people sterilized or poisoned them during the Gelding), and especially because Griz’s dogs are family, he recklessly sets off with only his remaining dog Jip on a quest to retrieve Jess from the thief. The novel, then, recounts Griz’ adventures in a world with a vanishingly small number of people, a world nature is reclaiming from the impressive ruins of “your” civilization, roads, bridges, buildings, towns, etc., “The sheer relentless immensity of all that had been left behind by your people.” Griz is writing his story to “you,” the imaginary friend he has conjured from a scavenged pre-Gelding photograph of a boy jumping joyfully in the air on a beach with his younger sister and their dog. So Griz regularly addresses “you,” saying things like “The plastic your people made was strong stuff,” “With so many marvels around you, did you stop seeing them?” and “Was it always safer being a boy than a girl when you were alive?” Griz likes writing (needs to write) because he likes reading: “I lose myself in stories and find myself.” Reading, he says, is another way to survive; it helps us know how we got here. And opening a new book is like opening a door and traveling far away. He often alludes to books he’s read, like The Hobbit, the Narnia books, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Asterix. His favorite genre is post-apocalypse, so he’s read novels like A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Road, The Death of Grass, and The Day of the Triffids. Griz reads such books “sideways” to find out about life when they were written. Griz is a good storyteller. He likes to drop suspense bombs into his narrative like, “That's how I ended up here alone with no one but you to talk to,” and “I did not know that one day I would feel exactly what the tree had felt like, riven in half by bolt from out of a clear sky,” and “We were just going to get some honey. Not everything sweet is good for you.” Griz also has a knack for concise and telling description, as when he sees bramble-overgrown houses like shells out of which tall trees are growing, or as when he describes what it’s like for the first time to walk in a green forest or to climb a dilapidated roller coaster track or to eat a fresh peach or to listen to violin music or to see an impossible bridge (a breathtaking arch, light and joyous, a leap made from stone). Griz’ story does what the best science fiction does: defamiliarizes our everyday world. He makes us see newly things that we take for granted like cars, music, bridges, marmalade, squirrels, songbirds, zoos, and statues. At one point, he says something like, “Having been in the ruins of your world made me feel strongly the fragility and glory of life.” That is just what Fletcher’s novel does. At times it is a little unbelievable that Griz could read SO many books. When he sees some partially submerged giant windmills, he references Don Quixote tilting at them, and I can’t imagine a boy reading that long, difficult, strange novel (especially given how hard his family has to work to survive). At times Griz seems a little too aware of how things were before the Gelding, as when he asks, “Do you think the animals [in zoos] felt like they were in prison?” In such times Fletcher the author yanks me out of an otherwise deep immersion in Griz’ world and voice and thrusts me into the here and now. Despite such authorial intrusions, Griz is a compelling character. He’s ethical. He dislikes violence. Though he does kill deer and rabbits for food, when hunting he always makes them suffer as little and as shortly as possible. Despite his tendency to do rash things (like setting off on his boat alone with Jip to pursue a man who might be dangerous), Griz is also thoughtful and sensitive. He says things like, “My once bigger now forever smaller sister” (because Joy was older than he when she died, after which he’s continued growing). And “Better a brain than a fist. A brain can hold the whole universe. A fist only what it can grab or hit what it can't.” It’s a tight, powerful, suspenseful, beautiful book. In addition to Griz, there are other memorable characters, especially Brand, Jeanne d’Arc, and Jip. And author Fletcher reads the audiobook version perfectly. The novel is a paean to dogs (alas, nary a member of the cat family is mentioned). Griz relates many great instances of canine behavior, like chasing rabbits, being affronted by squirrels, seeing or hearing or smelling things Griz can’t, and acting like Griz should be able to solve problems or be in charge. “’Things could be worse,’ I told Jip, who thumped his tail and went back to licking the rabbit.” View all my reviews
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