Perhaps I’m in a bad mood and don’t know it. Maybe I got out of bed on the wrong side. Maybe I’m too tired. But Meg Rosoff’s There Is No Dog just left me cold.
I know! I’ve read some of your reviews out there in blog land – you all love this book! It’s a breath of fresh air, the book you’ve all been waiting for. But I was disappointed. My previous Meg Rosoff experience (How I Live Now) was a fabulous one, so perhaps my expectations were too high.
The construct was amusing – a teenage boy as god – which would actually explain a lot. But I got tired of it after the 3rd chapter. It felt like cleverness for the sake of cleverness.
I couldn’t engage with any of the characters; they left me cold, with a couldn’t care less attitude towards them.
I ended up skimming the middle section just to get it over and done with 😦
This book contains sexual references.
Meet your unforgettable protagonist: God, who, as it turns out, is a 19-year-old boy living in the present-day and sharing an apartment with his long-suffering fifty-something personal assistant. Unfortunately for the planet, God is lazy and, frankly, hopeless. He created all of the world’s species in six days because he couldn’t summon the energy to work for longer. He gets Africa and America mixed up. And his beleagured assistant has his work cut out for him when God creates a near-apolcalyptic flood, having fallen asleep without turning the bath off. There is No Dog is a darkly funny novel from one of our most delightfully unpredictable writers.
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