In praise of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

     There are times, as all habitual readers know, when you get a reading rhythm going and you can feel yourself being fed by a book and you wish to stave off the finish of the story. That’s a good thing.  An even better thing are the rare times when you read more slowly than is your wont, not only for aesthetic reasons, but also to catch your breath and regain your composure because you fear the book will be the finish of you. 

     The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, the novel by David Wroblewski, (2008) is a work wonderously wrought. I came late to this novel and I knew that it had been successful and widely praised.   It exceeded my expectations.  It may have destroyed my disinclination to spend time with first novels.  The language is precise, the narrative is daring—using implicit analogues to Hamlet to unfold the characters’ heartbreaking travails—and it’s filled with dogs . . . oh the dogs!  The Sawtelles are breeders of a different ilk.  They train their dogs far beyond the level of basic obedience before they allow them to be placed.  And to acquire a Sawtelle dog your character will be scrutinized as well as your wallet.

        Now at this point you may exclaim, “Aha!  Of course . . . if it’s about dogs then Casey will be ga ga about it.” Actually, I usually avoid “dog books,” having been disappointed in the past.  But this novel is as much about people as it is about their animals; Wroblewski explores the mutual mysteries of the “cognitive heart” in both species. You don’t have to be a dog person to be drawn to this book.  The characters are compelling and the narrative is knotted so well the stitches don’t show.

       Edgar is mute but not deaf.  He grows up on his parents’ farm and easily steps into their work of breeding and training.  Almondine is his dog who owns him as much as he does her.  Their relationship is exquisitely conceived as she tends to him when he is voiceless and vulnerable as an infant child.  Young human and dog are present and prescient to each throughout the story.  Trouble arrives early when Edgar is a teen.  His uncle re-enters Sawtelle family life and you can see Shakespeare’s Claudius in Claude without squinting a bit.  Trudy is perhaps less convincing as a Gertrude manqué but the father Gar is the quintessential senior Hamlet before and after his demise.  Most deft is the echoing of the play within the play.  Edgar teaches the dogs a pantomime and a trick to catch Claude’s conscience—or what there is of it.

     But even if The Story of Edgar Sawtelle were shorn of Shakespearean parallels, it would still compel.  When Edgar flees to the forest with three of the Sawtelle dogs, there is tension and tenderness in their plight.  In this late section we meet two eccentric secondary characters who are vividly etched. By their singularity they teach the boy about the verities of the human heart.  He puts these insights to good use in the dangerous and dramatic conclusion. By the end of the book we have not only been moved but edified.

     Don’t go to your grave without reading this novel.