The Painter by Peter Heller

About two years ago, I read a first novel by Peter Heller.  The dystopian landscape he painted in The Dog Stars, captured my imagination immediately.  I met Heller at a library conference and was further intrigued by the author himself.  He has an impressive resume of non-fiction work, as well as duties on NPR.  Earlier this year, my wife surprised me with a copy of his latest novel, The Painter. 

Jim Stegner is a painter with a checkered past.  He shot a man in a bar, and spent some time in prison.  He has a passion for fly fishing, which he did with his daughter Alce (sic), until she got involved in a drug deal which went bad.  The perp stabbed her numerous times and left her in an alley.  As often happens, this led to the breakup of his marriage.  Now paroled, he has settled in Colorado, established himself with a trendy gallery, and his paintings sell in the middle to high five figures.  On a routine drive to a fishing hole, he finds the road blocked by horse trailer.  Two men attempt to wrangle a horse into the trailer.  One of the men gets a 2x4 from his truck and begins beating the horse.  Jim’s temper gets the better of him, and he attacks the man, breaks his nose, and pushes him into a ditch.  The other man attacks Jim, and he ends up on the ground.  The two horse-beaters leave Jim with the horse.

This apparently innocuous event begins to form a maelstrom sweeping Jim into a mess of enormous proportions.  prose is so intense, I felt myself beside him in the dark woods.  I walked with him, the branches scraped my arms, shadows followed me, I saw figures moving in the brush.  The sense someone was after me overpowered me, and forced me to take breaks from reading parts of the novel.

One particularly intense scene occurs during the end of the novel.  Jim calmly fishes a stream.  Suddenly, “‘OW!’ // Hard pressed under my jaw the cold prod.  Steel.  I knew without a thought that it was a gun. // ‘Prince nymph, good choice.  What I’d use probably.’ // I couldn’t see him.  He was behind me with the handgun held out and up against my throat.  His voice was graveled, as if he hadn’t spoken in a while. // ‘Can’t lose tonight.  Nobody feeding up top, all gathered up in the deeper pools, idling, just waiting for that thing to tumble by.’ // His voice in the back of my ear.  Could smell the chew on his breath, not a bad smell, Copenhagen.  Couldn’t look though, couldn’t turn my head, because there was the cold muzzle hard against the bone.  The quickening of my heart. // ‘Hi, Jason.’ // A long silence while the snout of the handgun held pressure against my head” (353-354).  This encounter continues for a terrifying and tense 10 more pages.  I read the conclusion to this novel in about 4 chunks.  The intensity prevented me from stopping, but I needed the breather.  I expected something terrible to happen almost from the time Jim pushed the man into the ditch.  Things did happen, but not the way I expected.  You will have to figure out the ending for yourself.

This roller-coaster novel swings between pleasant peaceful experiences and terrifying car chases, fly fishing in a mountain stream, scary moments in the woods, and shots fired at a house Jim visited to complete a portrait commission.  I am anxiously awaiting the next novel by the talented author, Peter Heller.  I hope he can top his latest, The Painter.  5 stars

--Chiron, 7/11/15

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

A good friend recommended The Dog Stars by Peter Heller for my book club.  At first, I thought, Oh, no, another apocalyptic, dystopian novel!  But I am a loyal member of the club, so I decided to plow through to the end.  Then I faced another obstacle.  A peculiar style – sentence fragments, and something like a focused stream of consciousness.  In other words, the narrator jots down words and phrases to tell the story of an earth devastated by an outbreak of flu closely followed by a mysterious blood disease, which killed millions.  But I stayed with it, and as I became accustomed to the style, I found the story so absorbing, I could barely put it down.

Hig is a pilot, and he flies “The Beast” -- an old Cessna manufactured in the 1950s.  He lives near an airport with supplies of aviation fuel, tools, and parts to keep The Beast flying an 8-mile radius around the perimeter looking for wandering bands of survivors.  He takes these trips with his beloved companion, Jasper.  Hig has a soft spot for a family of Mennonites who live a few miles away.  The family is infected with “The Blood,” and when Hig visits to give them some food and medical supplies, he stays 15 feet away and never touches any of the children.

He shares this airport residence with Bangley, who has a military mindset and an impressive collection of weapons – both small and large.  He is justly paranoid, and encounters with wanderers turn deadly.  He tries to convince Hig to be more aggressive when wanderers appear, and he also has a slightly distrustful eye always on Hig.

I can’t say much more without giving away the twists in the plot and the suspenseful flight Hig takes to track down a mysterious signal he receives from an airport just at the edge of The Beast’s range.

My friend provided a series of questions as launching points for discussion.  One interesting question involved the significance of the title.  No one came up with a plausible idea, but it occurred to me that perhaps the word “stars” in the title is not a noun but a verb.  I won’t go any further with this thought, because I do not want to give any of the plot away.

The Dog Stars is my first encounter with Peter Heller and his first novel.  He has also written non-fiction works on surfing, whales, and travelogues on China and Tibet.  I rarely read this kind of non-fiction, but Heller has made me travel-curious.  5 stars

--Chiron, 5/3/13