The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (3.5 stars)

An interesting post-apocalyptic read, sitting at the intersection of that genre and literary fiction. Survivalists who like to geek out on the details will probably be fairly disappointed: flying planes is a central part of the novel, despite the shelf life of avgas being about a year, which the author attempts to patch over in a few places.

The writing style is "stream of consciousness" with plenty of missing punctuation, which was somewhat annoying at first. There's some very sudden transitions from survivalist adventure type novel, to literary and reflective. These felt fairly jarring but were not implausible for the style of storytelling.

This was our ritual while we waited for our lives to truly begin and I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don’t know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tentative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience: This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightly. Those times that can fly.

Eventually surviving isn't enough, and leads to a almost-suicidal mission to seek out new people. This leads to a love story, and finishes with an action novel, which are all in stark contrast to the lonely reflective passages.

Favourite quote:

Watch anyone enter their arena of real mastery and you see it, the growing bigger than themselves.

3.5 stars