This past Christmas I received three books. One of them was The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. I had never read a book about the end of civilization and I have to say it is a little depressing and very eerie when you finish at 4:30 in the morning. All I wanted to do was talk to someone to ensure that the end of the world had not happened. Luckily I live on a busy street and could hear the sounds of other people still.
Written years later from the perspective of Hig (one of two main characters) you slowly learn about the flu pandemic and how he has had to survive and what he has lost. The other main character is Bangley; a man to be feared, but knows how to survive. Heller writes his sentences as the thoughts of someone who has had only one other man and a dog to talk to in close to a decade. This makes the knowledge of how Hig's life has been even more emphasized to the reader. Hig's thoughts are not completely linear and he bounces from past to present often. It is a well written book and definitely a page turner.
I must say though that reading about the end of the human race is not something I enjoy. The book had me turning the page though to see if Hig ever found other "civilized" people. People who didn't want to kill him on sight for just living.This topic has me thinking about whether it would be better to die with the majority of the population and everyone you love or to be a lone survivor. How hard would it be to stay sane knowing that the rest of the survivors are scattered around the world and probably hostile? Would my desire to live be strong enough to endure through everything I would have to see and do to survive? It is also depressing to think about how society crumbles and breaks down. I will have to read a few other books about this topic to see how other writers have portrayed the last surviving humans.