A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World – C.A. Fletcher

My name’s Griz. My childhood wasn’t like yours. I’ve never had friends, and in my whole life I’ve not met enough people to play a game of football.

My parents told me how crowded the world used to be, but we were never lonely on our remote island. We had each other, and our dogs.

Then the thief came.

There may be no law left except what you make of it. But if you steal my dog, you can at least expect me to come after you.

Because if we aren’t loyal to the things we love, what’s the point?

Well now. This is quite some book. I love a good post-apocalyptic dystopia as much as the next guy. And A Boy and His Dog is a great one.

A hundred years or so ago, babies stopped being born, mostly. Humanity is reduced to a few stragglers scattered around. The world is largely empty. Here we meet Griz, living on a remote Scottish island with his small family and of course, his dogs. It’s the theft of one of these dogs that drives the story, and what we have is a quest through the remnants of a society long gone.

I mean, who wouldn’t go looking for their dog?

The world that Fletcher presents is beautifully broken, empty landscape seen through a fresh pair of eyes from someone unfamiliar with our world. Indeed the story is presented as just that – a story which Griz is telling to an imaginary, imagined friend, but to say more would be to rob you of the joy of finding out.

And it’s this finding out what happens along with Griz that makes this story so special – Griz understands the old world through reading our books, but has many questions along the way. It’s a wonderfully small story, with a wonderfully large scope. Very different from a lot of the other post-apocalyptic fiction I’ve read, and one which I highly recommend you check out.

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher is published by Orbit Books and is out now. Many thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for inviting me on the tour, and to Nazia Khatun from Orbit for the advance review copy.