The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - A Book Review

A good epic possesses you, making you feel like the world you are walking, eating, and breathing in is nothing but a background for the vivid scenes you're reading whenever you have a spare minute. A good epic transports you to other worlds, times and places and lets you inhabit someone else's skin for a while. A really good epic also teaches you about a topic, burning indelible details in your mind.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski is an epic novel that sets those standards. I didn't realize until I sat down to write this post that Oprah featured it as one of her book club picks and I'm glad I didn't know as I might not have read it just to be a rebel. And then I wouldn't have had the pleasure of being moved to messy cathartic sobs on the sunny beaches of Tobago.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle takes place in the backwoods of Wisconsin. Edgar is a mute 14-year old boy but he is not limited by his lack of speech. he communicates effectively with his parents and the dogs they train and breed with his own brand of sign language. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is equally about Edgar as it is about Almondine and the other dogs they raise. Wroblewski does such an amazing job personifying the dogs that they are characters in themselves and often seem more noble than most of the humans in the book.

Wroblewski is a master scene setter, especially when he describes extreme weather. I was at the edge of my lounge chair envisioning dark tornadoes and violent thunder. He also described the dogs so vividly that I could almost feel their pelt under my fingers. The entire novel is so beautifully written, and it is apparent that he took years to perfect his craft.

This is the type of book that I look forward to re-reading, and I do that incredibly rarely (apparently Stephen King also deemed it re-readable, and that is incredibly rare for him too). I not only look forward to enjoying his beautiful prose again, I also want to delve more into the symbolism. Although the plot was gripping in itself, there was much I missed about Hamlet, and the Jungle Book.