I first encountered Meg Rosoff when I read her earlier novel “How I live” now, and I was absolutely captivated by her gorgeous prose and the clever handling of language. So, I was expecting great things with her latest novel “There is No Dog”. Alas, I feel a bit let down.
The premise of this was intriguing- ‘God’ is a teenage boy with an attitude problem; he’s irresponsible and full of hormones. But somehow, the story just never seemed to go anywhere. Bob (God) is a pain in the proverbial and annoys everyone around him. There’s a full cast of slightly other-worldly characters and it seemed like it was trying to be a little bit Terry Pratchett on one hand and a little bit contemporary Greek mythology… the gods that walk among us and cause chaos. But it just didn’t really pull of either for me.
It seems like a minor point but the title got to annoy me. Of course, it’s a take from that old gag about dyslexics and God but it just seems like they called it that so as not to offend people by calling it “There is no God”. There’s one line in the book about Bob being dyslexic and that’s it. Maybe I just missed the punch line but it seemed kinda daft to me. A lot like the book.
I’ve read some real rave review of this book so if you’re into mythology or Pratchett-esk books, it might be worth a shot. It wasn’t for me, though.
