![]() I've seen a number of reviews comparing Heller's novel with Cormac McCarthy's 2006 classic The Road. This rather thoughtless inconsistency is not the only problem with The Dog Stars, but it does serve as a kind of leitmotif for the novel's irksomeness. I'd been wading all afternoon and the current was cold where it pushed up against my knees and thighs but my feet were long numb with that kind of dead warmth. ![]() It is rather jarring, therefore, a hundred pages further in, to find the narrator paddling around in a brook so cold it numbs his circulation: Some time later, we learn that the reason the trout died out is because the waters of the mountain streams they once swam in have become too warm for them. Brookies, rainbows, browns, cutthroats, cutbows, every one. If I ever woke up crying in the middle of a dream, and I'm not saying I did, it's because the trout are gone, every one. Shortly after The Dog Stars opens, we find the novel's hero, the abruptly named Hig, mourning the eternal passing of the humble trout: ![]()
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