Ok, so Oprah just named this her newest book club book, so now I'm feeling all Jonny-come-lately, and I did start this post before her announcement, I just never got around to finishing it.....but whatever. Ok, actually, it deserves the publicity.
It's been a long time since I read a book that caused me to totally neglect my kids and everything else that I was supposed to do around the house in order to read just a few more chapters. So I loved it for that.
The central character is Edgar Sawtelle, a young teenager growing up in mid-century Wisconsin on the farm where his father and mother are raising a fictional breed of dogs, the Sawtelles. Edgar is also born mute and communicates with his parents and also with the dogs through sign. The story itself derives a lot of its elements and characters out of Hamlet, but Edgar himself would choose to identify more with the characters and elements of Kipling's The Jungle Book. Certainly one of the most interesting aspects of the story is the relationship that Edgar has with the dogs, and specifically one dog that he's been especially close to since birth. But this is way more than a boy-and-his-dog story (because I don't even like dogs).
The pace of the story telling is gentle and I felt that it was through this pace that the reader really comes to understand Edgar and his world of silence.
It was one of the most enjoyable and satisfying reads I'd had in a long time.
ps. Anna, it's nice and long (like 555 pages), so I know you'll like it.
2 comments:
Long it is, and I will confess it took me about 300 pages to really get into it. But it is a book well worth reading. The whole Hamlet re-tell is amazing to me. A flawless re-write, brilliantly done. The book is so different from your run of the mill fiction. Anyway, all in all a most satisfying read.
I was totally into this book, and loved it all until I got to the end. I'm sorry but I just wasn't satisfied, in fact it left me frustrated and unfulfilled. So although the fisrt 7/8ths of the book was great, the last bit ruined it for me. (But then again I didn't really like Hamelt either).
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