Just finished reading this. I'm in Kerala, where there's basically
nothing to do, so I read the entire thing in a day.
It was very odd.
The book jacket
gives away the plot almost completely:
"What if God were a teenaged boy? In the beginning, Bob created the heavens and the earth and the beasts of the field and the creatures of the sea, and twenty-five million other species (including lots of cute girls). But mostly he prefers eating junk food and leaving his dirty clothes in a heap at the side of his bed.
Every time he falls in love, Earth erupts in natural disasters, and it's usually Bob's beleaguered assistant, Mr. B., who is left cleaning up the mess. So humankind is going to be very sorry indeed that Bob ever ran into a beautiful, completely irresistible girl called Lucy . . ."
I've read a couple of Rosoff's books before and been absolutely blown away by her genius, which is the primary reason I bought this book.
Also there was a limited selection at the used bookstore I stopped at on the way to Kerala.
I'm not disappointed with it, exactly. Bob is a typical teenage boy - selfish, lazy, obsessed with getting laid. And Lucy is described as no less than perfect - full figured, delicate features, fiercely upbeat (don't we all wish we were Lucy?). Bob does, indeed, fall in love with Lucy, and it does result in disaster for Earth. Not that he cares at all. It is a Mr. B who is the real caretaker of Earth, the one who deals with diseases and landslides and rape. Mr. B is Bob's keeper of sorts - he is described as "more than a personal assistant, less than a father figure—a fixer,
perhaps, facilitator, amanuensis.*" Other characters include Mona, Bob's mother who is even more selfish and irresponsible than he is, somehow, and Estelle, a goddess who actually has her morals in order. Can't help liking her. And my favorite is Eck - Bob's pet, a penguiny creature with a long nose and soft gray fur, who can't talk but seems to understand human speech perfectly and manages to communicate with gestures and noises. I need this kind of pet in my life. My rabbit just stares at me when I talk to her. Which isn't often, or anything.
I really loved how Rosoff described humans and the earth. She struck the perfect balance between viewing human catastrophe as a pain, simply something to be dealt with by someone else (Bob's view) and the knowledge that there are an infinite number of petitions, of prayers that will go unanswered. Bob's view is unfortunately often our own, I think, though few will admit it - how many of us have thrown away a letter from March of Dimes, or PETA, assuming someone else will donate that day? That it's not our responsibility?
Without getting into hairy questions of religion and morality, Rosoff based the creation story loosely on the Bible, poking fun at it in the most lighthearted of ways - " "All of this was created in just six days. Six days! No wonder Earth is such a mess." Hahaha. There's probably some truth in that. And to top it off humans are created in God's image - Bob's in this case. "Complete with all [his] tragic flaws and an infinite chocolate box selection of tragic outcomes."
Compared with her other books, I had two main qualms with this one. One, I couldn't identify a strong plotline. Many things seemed to be happening in parallel - Eck was gambled away to be eaten, Bob scheming to have sex with Lucy, Estelle looking for a job. In the end when all the subplots converged I couldn't help feeling like the whole book came together too tidily. Too contrived. Of course all stories are contrived to some extent, I suppose - but in this case it read almost like Rosoff had started writing with no end in mind and when the manuscript reached novel length she decided to tie everything together quickly with some flimsy cotton thread. Not even kite string.
The second qualm was that there was no sense of urgency, something which has lent Rosoff's other books that I-can't-put-this-down quality. I did in fact put this book down many times for no specific reason. Although she had every kind of conceivable disaster to choose from - literally - the book sidled along with no real force. You would think countries flooding and people dying and whales on the verge of extinction would harry you a bit, but it really didn't. I found myself responding to the whole situation much like Bob would be expected too. Possibly because the book approached earthly problems with a bit of a resigned air. Which is maybe the most brilliant insight - we are beyond salvation at this point and just waiting for a meteor to destroy us all.
*which means, by the way, one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript
Sources:
http://www.shmoop.com/there-is-no-dog/mr-b.html
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amanuensis
http://www.megrosoff.co.uk/books/there-is-no-dog/
