Chasing the Blue Sky
By: Will Lowrey / Narrated By: Rudy Sanda
Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
Tragedy through and through that makes for an absolute horror show
I dunno. I s’pose maybe Chasing the Blue Sky is an utterly brilliant novel. It very much brings to the listener all that is horribly wrong with human beings.
Period.
So, for a Halloween Pick, it makes perfect sense.
For regular down-time listening, however?
Oh. My. GOD!
Just go into listening to this book knowing there is NO light, no love, no hope whatsoever. Truly, I believe author Will Lowrey was going for a true-to-life, hard-hitting depiction of just how lowly we as a society view, and treat, the lesser of God’s creatures.
It starts off horribly sad. The story is based on the life of pit bull mix, Toby, but it begins before his birth with his mother’s life as a mistreated and woefully neglected dog who lives in the heat, in the freezing temperatures outdoors and immobilized by a heavy chain. She has no freedom, no affection, no attention, and she rarely has food, rarely has water. A chance encounter with a stray leaves her with a passel of puppies, and of COURSE, since this is how the story’s going, a couple die. The rest she loves and cares for. Naturally, they’re given away, one by one, and each loss breaks more of her spirit.
She’s left with little Toby until he too is sold. She is unutterably broken, and that’s where her story ends… or continues… each day of the future looking oh so awful.
Then we get into Toby’s life as a loved pup who is soon forgotten, then is taken to the pound because the new family is expecting a baby. So, we’ve got that covered too. Then we have how awful it is for animals in a shelter, a kill-shelter (And make no mistake: I TOTALLY respect the hell outta the animal-loving people who work in those shelters, loving and giving where they can, only to be met with heartache…), the fear, the incessant noise, wonderful friends of Toby being put to sleep, or dear friends finding forever homes far away from him.
Reality and hopelessness break him down. And the story continues with its despairing tones. Until we get to the end, and have I mentioned… there is no hope?!? It’s a riDICulously tragic tale, and while I’m glad I listened to it, I rather felt that I didn’t need the education. I’m that person who picks dead animals out of the street to find who owned them or to bury them in the garden. I’m the person people call with needs for advice given that they’ve just witnessed this or that case of extreme cruelty.
So I didn’t need this… And I sighed mightily throughout it all. And narrator Rudy Sanda does well with the main narrative, but when we get to the dialogue, holy crud! His voices are exTREme caricatures, almost like listening to a cartoon. But then I had to remind myself that the author was indeed going for Every. Single. Story. And/Or JERK out there. It’s like the characters are composites of atrocious individuals, and each scene was a story based on what kill-shelters have to listen to every single day.
-BUT-
You looking for a good ol’ horror story this Halloween? Do indeed go for Chasing the Blue Sky, where the only happiness comes from getting the hell outta this stinking world.
And remember:
Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Wander into THIS story!
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