Mr. Wroblewski puts Edgar on a warm, cozy, paw-boxing basis with the Sawtelle dogs by rendering the boy mute from birth. Although Edgar’s condition is a terrible liability at certain crucial plot junctures, it is more often a blessing. Edgar speaks his own private sign language to people and dogs alike. He has no trouble making himself understood to his loved ones, whether they have two legs or four … One of Mr. Wroblewski’s most impressive accomplishments here is to exert a strong, seemingly effortless gravitational pull. The reader who has no interest in dogs, boys or Oedipal conflicts of the north woods of Wisconsin will nonetheless find these things irresistible. Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down.
Here is a big-hearted novel you can fall into, get lost in and finally emerge from reluctantly, a little surprised that the real world went on spinning while you were absorbed … Most of the story comes to us through a masterful, transparent voice: The author, the narrator, the pages -- everything fades away as we're drawn into this engrossing tale. But there are also a few inventive variations. Once in a while, we see events from a dog's point of view, in a strangely humane but inhuman perspective. Another chapter is made up of Edgar's first memories as a baby and toddler, and there's a chilling section told from the murderer's perspective … The final section gathers like a furious storm of hope and retribution that brings young Edgar to a destiny he doesn't deserve but never resists.
By borrowing the plot of the most famous play in history, Wroblewski is sacrificing much of the suspense; after all, we know how Hamlet ends. To compensate, Wroblewski seeks to impress the reader with feats of literary legerdemain … The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is, all at once, a mystery, a thriller, a ghost story and a literary tour de force. Just as the Sawtelles seek inner meaning in the bloodlines of a dog, the author invites us to see signs and portents in every tragedy that befalls the star-crossed family … The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is an authentic epic, long and lush, full of back story and observed detail.
David Wroblewski, in his ambitious first novel, uses the framework of Shakespeare’s tragedy to grant that patient dog its day … Wroblewski’s literary skill is most apparent in his intoxicating descriptions of the bucolic setting … He handles his task with impressive subtlety, even when allowing the narrative a dog’s-eye view. But while sections of this book achieve a piercing elegance, the novel too often slides into the torpid mode of field guides and breeding manuals, with Wroblewski’s penchant for detail getting in the way of a full exploration of his characters’ emotional cores.
Edgar is a teenager, but his tragic story deals with grown-up themes: loyalty and betrayal, and the power and limits of words. Wroblewski...lets the dogs in his novel share in the narration, to a small degree. Sounds hokey, but it works remarkably well … The plot, which unfolds slowly, is rooted in rich and realistic details.
The plot moves ahead in the manner one familiar with Hamlet might expect, especially if Shakespeare had had access to old cars, baseball on the radio, and dog breeding. Wroblewski is a terrific writer and has an unerring ear for dialogue — both spoken and signed — and his scenes involving Edgar and his dogs are both authentic and moving … A little bonding goes a long way, however, and there is a lot of bonding in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. There are scenes once Edgar has fled into the woods with his dogs that last an eternity. There are his encounters with a ghost (not his father's) that slow the novel for no apparent reason. And there are those lengthy transcripts from old letters about dog breeding that seem to belong in a science fiction novel.
I have never had a dog nor much interest in the canine world, but the pages and pages of training details as a newborn puppy grows into adulthood had me enthralled … In such a long book, there are gaudy purple patches here and there, but no limp pages. Wroblewski is as good as Jane Smiley, who set King Lear in contemporary Iowa, and if he keeps up this level of work, he'll be in Louise Erdrich's company. And that is high praise.
The reader cannot help but reference a lineage of good-versus-evil brothers, a genealogy linking Steinbeck to Shakespeare to Abel and Cain. When Gar dies inexplicably, Edgar and Trudy carry on their work as best they can, though they are nearly paralyzed with grief … You do not have to be a ‘dog person’ to appreciate Wroblew ski's portraiture of each and every dog — these creatures who are bred to make choices, to live as cognizant individuals with more dignity than can be ascribed to many humans … With The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Wroblewski achieves the iconic dream of so many writers, that of bursting forth (after, of course, years of brutal and anonymous work weaving straw into gold) with what can deservedly be called a great American novel.
A debut novel such as this does not come along often … The plot ratchets up into a truly tension-filled thriller that, with Hamlet as the background, can only end in tragedy. Sad, perhaps, but the novel is what it must be.
A stately, wonderfully written debut novel that incorporates a few of the great archetypes: a disabled but resourceful young man, a potential Clytemnestra of a mom and a faithful dog … The novel succeeds admirably in telling its story from a dog’s-eye view that finds the human world very strange indeed.
