The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel

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The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel

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Amazon.com:

Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: It's gutsy for a debut novelist to offer a modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin--particularly one in which the young hero, born mute, communicates with people, dogs, and the occasional ghost through his own mix of sign and body language. But David Wroblewski's extraordinary way with language in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle immerses readers in a living, breathing world that is both fantastic and utterly believable. In selecting for temperament and a special intelligence, Edgar's grandfather started a line of unusual dogs--the Sawtelles--and his sons carried on his work. But among human families, undesirable traits aren't so easily predicted, and clashes can erupt with tragic force. Edgar's tale takes you to the extremes of what humans must endure, and when you're finally released, you will come back to yourself feeling wiser, and flush with gratitude. And you will have remembered what magnificent alchemy a finely wrought novel can work. --Mari Malcolm

Book Description

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm--and into Edgar's mother's affections.

Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires--spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes--the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain--create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.

Double Life, with Dogs: An Amazon Exclusive Essay by David Wroblewski

We write the stories we wish we could read. There's no other reason to do it, to spend years pacing around your basement, mumbling, pecking at a keyboard, turning your back on a world that offers such a feast of delicious fruits. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle came about because some time ago I wished I could read a novel about a boy and his dog, one that integrated our contemporary knowledge of canine behavior, cognition, and origins with my experience of living with dogs; if possible, something flavored with the uncynical Midwestern sense of heart and purpose so familiar from my childhood (and something which, in truth, I've spent much my adult life being slightly ashamed of, as if either heart or purpose were embarrassing attributes for a grown-up to display). I'd recently come to know a good dog, maybe the best dog I'd ever met, and the subject of people and dogs and ethics and character suddenly seemed urgent. But when I went looking for such a story, I had to go back almost a hundred years, back to Jack London's Call of the Wild. That was a surprise. A little while after that, an idea for a story came to me--not the whole thing, but enough to start.

Continue Reading Double Life, With Dogs

Praise from Stephen King

"I flat-out loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and spent twelve happy evenings immersed in the world David Wroblewski has created. As I neared the end, I kept finding excuses to put the book aside for a little, not because I didn't like it, but because I liked it too much; I didn't want it to end. Dog-lovers in particular will find themselves riveted by this story, because the canine world has never been explored with such imagination and emotional resonance. Yet in the end, this isn't a novel about dogs or heartland America--although it is a deeply American work of literature. It's a novel about the human heart, and the mysteries that live there, understood but impossible to articulate. Yet in the person of Edgar Sawtelle, a mute boy who takes three of his dogs on a brave and dangerous odyssey, Wroblewski does articulate them, and splendidly. I closed the book with that regret readers feel only after experiencing the best stories: It's over, you think, and I won't read another one this good for a long, long time.

In truth, there's never been a book quite like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I thought of Hamlet when I was reading it, and Watership Down, and The Night of the Hunter, and The Life of Pi--but halfway through, I put all comparisons aside and let it just be itself.

I'm pretty sure this book is going to be a bestseller, but unlike some, it deserves to be. It's also going to be the subject of a great many reading groups, and when the members take up Edgar, I think they will be apt to stick to the book and forget the neighborhood gossip.

Wonderful, mysterious, long and satisfying: readers who pick up this novel are going to enter a richer world. I envy them the trip. I don't re-read many books, because life is too short. I will be re-reading this one."

Customer Reviews:

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-22
Good Stuff; Should Have Been Cut
There is a possibly apocryphal story about the late John Gardner who said, to an editor who suggested that his The Sunlight Dialogues ought to be cut by a third, "Which third?" Been a long time since I read that book, but that kept coming back to me in reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Had it been cut by a third, it would have been a vastly superior book.

The writing is wonderful and heartfelt and evocative, and I congratulate the author on sticking to it for the 10 years it took to write. And I love the "supernatural" aspects of the story. Those are perhaps my favorite parts.

Is it as good as Cold Mountain, which also hewed to a classic story? No. Not by a long shot. Sure, it's by an out-of-nowhere first novelist, and it's literary. But this story just hasn't got the complexity that Charles Frazier brought to his novel.

For me--one reader--there was just too much about the dogs that bogged down the plot. Yes, they're a wonderful invention, and yes, they're crucial to the story. But they often get in the way of the story of the people, which tends to sap the narrative drive.

And though the author is not slavishly attached the his Hamlet plot, it was not hard to predict what was going to happen, which also took some of the narrative tension away.

In many respects, this seems almost like the kind of book that's published today for an adult audience but in the future is read only by school kids.

None of which is to say that I didn't read every last word--well, almost. And none of which is to say that I didn't like it a lot: I did. And I'm looking forward to the next one. If it takes ten years and exhibits as much care and attention to detail, so be it.

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-21
A very long short story
This is a very well written book with serious flaws. I cannot fathom what the point of the book is or why it's getting such good press. The author doesn't seem to understand the relationship between story and the flow of ideas. He skips over important details such as why anyone does anything they do in the story. Why does the uncle kill Edgar's father? Why does Edgar run away? Why does he come back? What does all that training have to do with the story. And someone please explain the old woman at the grocery store. Great books, and even just good ones, use incident to explain motivation and to carry forward the ideas the book is trying to convey. This book is filled with incident that has no bearing on anything and the author carries the story forward with the help of ghosts, strange storms, and sudden unexplained shifts in the character's understanding of what is happening. In reality, I kept imagining that it was really a 576 page short story. It is certainly not a novel in the traditional sense. I think the buzz is because of the nice dogs. True, when I was a boy I had a really great purebred Collie who was really a person in disguise, and I still remember him very fondly, forty years on. But even Brody, my dog, could not warrant a pointless 576 page short story.

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-21
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
The book was too long. It could have been told in less detail about dog training.
When the Mother was so very sick at home and medicine apparently was not helping, one more visit to the Doctor and she immediatly came home and was feeling fine.
It was not expained why Edgar was suddenly sent off into the woods by his Mother.
Less pages and this story would have been just as interesting.

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-21
great summer read
Wonderful story...I'm still reading it. I look forward to my reading time, to my escape into this place. So far it's warm, it flows, it's a picture of words. Amazing first novel.

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-21
Disappointed - Not worthy of quesionable hype
I'm having a really hard time believing that all these 5-star reviews are legitimate. Some of them don't even seem to be by someone who READ this book as they are full of factual errors. I cannot recommend this book, but will try to provide some insight into what you'll REALLY be getting if you buy it.

What's good: Author is a gifted wordcrafter, with an ability to pick poetic and unusual phrases to capture an image or feeling. The dog interactions in the wild are inspired and inspiring. The evoking of a time and place (rural Wisconsin in the 50's) is powerful.

What's not: Pacing is virtually unchanged throughout. There are dozens of plotlines that occupy pages and go nowhere and are never resolved or tied in (dog breeding debate, Forte, stray puppy, town fortune teller, role of Dr. Papideau, Henry and the dogs - for just a few). It's sort of like a long poem or a set of song lyrics that makes you sit back and appreciate it's beauty, but scratch your head at the point. Presented as a tragedy, but just disappointing, not cathartic. Evil personified (Claude) is just sort of grey and strange - no convincing explanation for source of his evilness or his motivation for ruining everything. No clear personal flaws presented in Gar, Trudy or Edgar to make them deserving of their fate - in fact quite the contrary. About 90% of the way through, all these threads have been spun and you're waiting for the author to work his magic of pulling them all together into a beautiful and coherent ending, and instead he just quits and literally burns it all down. It's not that I insist on a happy ending, but I insist on one that makes me feel there was a point to my journey.

In short, if you love Russian novels, go ahead. DON'T buy if you think you're getting a "dog story" or a "kid story".

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