SLIGHT SPOILERS!!

One of the best things about literary fiction is being held in thrall by the sheer power of an unusual voice. Sometimes a unique voice is disastrous--the book Precious made me want to claw my eyes out after only two pages--but in Peter Heller's Dog Stars, I was swept away by the most powerful prose I've read in a very long time. Genuine and moving, this book manages to teach lessons about the true nature of human existence while simultaneously being very quiet and introverted.

Here's what I loved:

1. The character development is superb.

Even the dog, Jasper, was as real to me as people I actually know and when (SPOILER ALERT) he dies, I was literally sobbing. I really mean it. Whether you love or hate his writing style, the author deserves major kudos for the exquisitely rendered humanity of all the characters in this harrowing book--even the ones who aren't actually human.

2. The story is unflinchingly honest.

There is no artifice here, there is only a story so purely real it resonates on another level than most books I read. My heart ached for the protagonist, for the beauty and horror, for everything lost and the few tiny scraps of hope that can save a man from madness or despair. There is great violence and also great tenderness here, and all of it is handled with the care of an artist who knows exactly what he wants to say, and how to get a reader to feel the weight of his conviction to the theme in subtle, emotional ways.

3. The prose. My God, the f'ing prose.

"I stood in the shade of the tree in the cool breath of the moving water and let the sound, the light breeze blow through me. I was a shell. Empty. Put me to your ear and you would hear the distant rush of a ghost ocean. Just nothing. The slightest pressure of current or tide could push and roll me. I would wash up here on this bank, dry out and bleach and the wind would scour and roughen me, strip away the thinnest layers until I was brittle and the thickness of paper. Until I crumbled into sand. That's how I felt. I'd say it was a relief to have at last nothing, nothing, but I was too hollow to register relief, too empty to carry it."

There is a beatiful stop/start, push/pull cadence to the prose that is at once lyrical and simple. It's like the literary love child of William Styron and Ernest Hemingway. It's achingly beautiful yet without a whiff of pretense, which is a pretty spectacular feat in and of itself.

OK, I'm done raving.

Bottom line: Not only is The Dog Stars worth reading, I think it should be *required* reading. Not everyone will get it and that's okay, but everyone who reads should be exposed to this level of genius. It will make you a more discerning reader and--just maybe--a more discerning person.