This book is, overall, a delight to read. Rosoff pulls of the surreal with grace and ease. Our God, Bob, is an eternal teenager who sleeps
late, mixes up Africa and America and then blames the subsequent droughts and floods on his non-existent dyslexia.
“In the old days, he snapped his fingers and things happened. He hates the way things are now. It is so unfair. Eck tilts his head and gently licks Bob’s ear with his long sticky tongue. It is his special way of expressing sympathy and it is not effective.”
So, it turns out that an excellent reason exists for the state of the world, for its suffering and contradictions and occasional wondrousness. But the philosophers who have spent their lives searching for the answer aren’t going to like it. God, you see, supreme and almighty creator, happens to be a shiftless, emo teenager who was handed the job by his mother after she won it in a cosmic game of poker. And his name is Bob.
This is the glorious, zany, and often dark conceit of There Is No Dog, by Meg Rosoff. A British YA title (which is far more adult in certain aspects than a lot of North American YA), this book is at once light and dark, hilarious and serious (well, a little serious, anyway). Our God, Bob, is an eternal teenager who sleeps late, mixes up Africa and America and then blames the subsequent droughts and floods on his non-existent dyslexia, and tends to fall in love with beautiful human girls, generally with disastrous results. Bob is taken care of by his majordomo, the mild-mannered and long-suffering Mr. B, who does his best to sort out the prayers, the catastrophes, and the suffering of the humans, whales (how Mr. B loves his whales), and everyone else on this mixed-up little planet. Continue reading “So THAT’S why life on earth sucks: A review of There Is No Dog, by Meg Rosoff”
