Review for There is No Dog by Meg Rosoff

There is No Dog by Meg Rosoff
Publisher: Puffin
Release Date: 4th August 2011
Genre: Young Adult, Religion, Comedy
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
Source: Received as part of UK Book Tours

Amazon Summary:
"In the beginning there was Bob.
And 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 and lots of gorgeous girls.
And all of this, he created in just six days.
Six days!
Congratulations, Bob!
No wonder Earth is such a mess.

Imagine that God is a typical teenage boy. He is lazy, careless, self-obsessed, sex-mad - and about to meet Lucy, the most beautiful girl on earth.

Unfortunately, whenever Bob falls in love, disaster follows.

Let us pray that Bob does not fall in love with Lucy."

Review
I originally wanted to read this book for my British Books Challenge with Meg Rosoff being an award winning British writer. Despite a lot of critical acclaim from the press I know a lot of people who either love or hate her books so with There is No Dog being my first book by Rosoff I was interested to see which category I would fall under and now that I’ve finished reading it I have to say I’m split firmly down the middle.

There is no doubt about the genius behind this book even from the synopsis – god turning out to be a teenage boy, of course! Brilliant! Now it all makes sense! And throughout the book Rosoff continues to explore the meaning of life through the eyes of several characters. The last of an extinct creature who knows he is soon going to die. A goddess who has the gift of immortality and how that brings her to lead an “invincible” lifestyle of excessive drinking and gambling. And, most interestingly of all for me, a vicar who throughout this book witnesses first hand a less than perfect God and has to personally deal with the fall out of Bob’s actions. The genius and thought put into this book were incredibly well thought out and thought provoking. I enjoyed that even though this book is essentially a story about religion at no point did it ever feel preachy so props have to go to Meg for that.

Now on to my dislikes. From the back of the book I expected this to be a rather humorous account through the eyes of a teenage god and whilst in some parts that was the case I couldn’t help wanting more from that side of the story. I wanted more about the thought process that went into Bob creating the world and more funny mishaps as Bob try’s to date a human girl. Unfortunately because there were so many other characters these things were only touched upon which I found disappointing. I also found Bob’s character to be quite patronizing and very stereotypical of a teenage boy with Bob only caring about himself and his latest conquest with no real thought process to back it up.

Overall I have very mixed feelings over There is No Dog. Some parts of this story were down right bizarre and for that reason I’m not sure if it will be everybody’s cup of tea. I can certainly see what Meg Rosoff was trying to achieve with this book but don’t think it was executed as well as it could have been. For me this book is a bit of a risk taker, I think most people will either love it or hate it. This book wasn’t really for me but I did enjoy it to some extent and for that reason don’t regret giving this book, something completely out of my comfort zone, a go.