The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

 

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – David Wroblewski

A mistake. Partly my fault.  My wife read this book along with another by the same author.  She told me she really liked one, but not the other.  I thought THIS was the one she liked.  It wasn’t.  I didn’t like it either.  Once I was about 100 pages in (which, sadly, was only about 1/6 of the length.), she warned me to stop. She warned me it would be a waste of time.  I’m stubborn. I pushed on.  I shouldn’t have.

The good news is that once I put in ANOTHER 100 pages, I realized this was a loss cause, and just proceeded to ‘skim’ each chapter.  It still took forever.  And to top it all off, a winner of the Oprah Book Club thingy.  Well, I’ve learned there is never an overwhelming consensus as to what people’s tastes are.  Many liked this.  Many did not. I’m of the latter.

This is one of those introspective stories that takes place out in the country where a family owns a dog farm.  I don’t think I’ve ever read so many boring accounts of dogs doing what dogs do.  Unlike the charming “The Art of Racing in the Rain” (it featured a dog with human thoughts), this one simply plods when the dogs enter the picture.  Oh sure, dogs are lovable, but reading about them walking, scratching, and barking doesn’t necessarily equate to good literature.

To top this off Edgar (the young boy and main character) is mute. Since he can’t speak, it somehow takes the author twice as long to convey Edgar’s thoughts whenever he’s having a ‘conversation’.  We have to read about how he used sign language, points to things, etc. and it just slows up the reading.  I’m not sure why it’s important that Edgar is mute.  Maybe more astute readers will pick it up, but as I said, I gave up about 1/3 of the way through the book.  So there’s stories of unexpected death, a family burdened by too many bills, sickness, and other things, but the whole thing just plodded.

It’s been said that everyone thinks that their own life is pretty interesting. But if you try to sit down and tell someone else (particularly a stranger) about, say, your childhood, you’ll probably bore them to death unless you have a rare interesting life.  This was the problem with this book.  This book told way too much about young Edgar who really lived rather a boring life.   And why did it have to be so long? The book, that is.