Yzabel / December 23, 2017

The Last Dog on Earth by Adrian J. Walker

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Every dog has its day…

And for Lineker, a happy go lucky mongrel from Peckham, the day the world ends is his: finally a chance to prove to his owner just how loyal he can be.

Reg, an agoraphobic writer with an obsession for nineties football, plans to wait out the impending doom in his second floor flat, hiding himself away from the riots outside.

But when an abandoned orphan shows up in the stairwell of their building, Reg and Lineker must brave the outside in order to save not only the child, but themselves…

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

Hmm, bit of a tough one, I don’t really know why it took me so long to finish it, because it’s not a particularly long book?

The topics are both hopeful (a man who embarks on a journey with his dog, to help a child he doesn’t want anything to do with at first, with their relationship developing along the way) and bleak (a maybe not so unbelievable future, unfortunately, considering the current state of affairs in the world, with political parties rising to power and starting to test people to see if they’re ‘of the right type’, rounding up people and putting them in camps ensue…). Probably not the kind of thing I’ve wanted to read recently, which may explain in part the lull I was in regarding this novel, but the latter theme is interesting nonetheless!

So. Great moments throughout the book. Having both Reg’s and Linekeer’s narratives side to side. The dog’s musings about life, what it means to be a dog, how he perceives the world (the smell of fear or grief of happiness, etc.), how he sees us humans and is both awed yet unable to comprehend us. The dire landscape of London, or rather what’s left of it, after a series of attacks coupled with the raise to power of the ‘Purple’ political party. Reg’s progress, from agoraphobic to forced out of his cocoon to actually choosing to stay out, and why he retreated so from the world.

However, I still never really connected with the characters in general. At times they’d have reactions that made me pause and wonder how they had survived so long in such a city, because let’s be honest, ‘fight or flight’ is OK, but ‘stay where I am, paralysed with fear, while bullets fly around me’ is not exactly conducive to long-term survival. I also wished we had had more of the bigger picture, instead of snippets about what happened to the world/London. (I know that wasn’t the focus, the point was the characters and their developing relationships, but it still bothered me.)

Although I do tend to agree with Lineker regarding how people who acknowledge how shitty they are, are the ones who may become the kindest, whereas the monsters keep thinking of themselves as being better, and never question themselves. It… makes sense.

Conclusion: As mentioned, possibly it wasn’t the right moment for me to read this book. I didn’t really enjoy it in spite of finding good, interesting points in it. But I don’t even really know why. I’d say, clearly a matter of ‘in the eye of the beholder’ here, rather than plenty of faults on the novel’s part.