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Review
‘I read it last summer and I could not stop. It’s also a first novel, a true labour of love.’ Audrey Niffenegger, Guardian (Books of the Year)
'Stately and expansive narrative. Wroblewski's story builds on foundations provided by past literature but has an originality all its own.' Nick Rennison, Sunday Times
‘It must be the closest anyone came in 2008 to writing the “Great American Novel”.’ Guardian (Books of the Year)
‘[A] most enchanting debut novel. A great, big, mesmerising read. Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down.’ New York Times
‘A big-hearted novel you can fall into, get lost in and finally emerge from reluctantly. Tender and suspenseful … grand and unforgettable.’ Washington Post
'I flat-out loved “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle”.’ Stephen King
‘An incredible journey that seems to have everything going for it; the beauty and flair of a great literary novel, the scale and pacing of a fantasy epic, and the absorbing thrill-ride of any glorious rites-of-passage adventure from our collective childhoods.’ Sunday Business Post
Scotsman (Books of the Year)
‘Remarkable.’ Uncut magazine (Books of the Year)
'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. It's a novel about the human heart, and the mysteries that live there, understood but impossible to articulate. 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 (of course…and in this version, Ophelia turns out to be a dog named Almondine), 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. 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.' Stephen King
‘An incredibly journey that seems to have everything going for it; the beauty and flair of a great literary novel, the scale and pacing of a fantasy epic, and the absorbing thrill-ride of any glorious rites-of-passage adventure from our collective childhoods.’ Sunday Business Post
HarperCollins
‘The plot echoes Hamlet, but it is the writing that makes it one of the best books I have read in the last few years.’
The Boston Globe
'Whether you read for the beauty of the language or the intricacies of the plot, you will easily fall in love with X’s generous, almost transcendentally lovely debut novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle ... The scope of this novel, its psychological insight and lyrical mastery make it one of the best novels of the year, and a perfect, comforting joy of a book for the summer.’
Oprah Magazine
'...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. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is an enormous but effortless read, trimmed down to the elements of a captivating story about a mute boy and his dogs.
Washington Post Book World
'The Great American Novel is something like a unicorn – rare and wonderful, and maybe no more than just a notion. Yet every few years or so, we trip across some semblance of one. Oof! What’s this? Why, it’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, a sprawling skein of a yarn about a farm nestled up against the forest primeval, aka the Chequamegon in northern Wisconsin, a place where the drama of nature unfolds daily, ceaselessly—recorded here with preternatural awareness, as if witnessed for the very first time…the story’s both more complicated than it sounds and yet boldly, bald-facedly what it is. How Edgar in time goes about breaking this domestic impasse and strikes out into the wide world will carry you through this novel’s 560-odd pellucid, mythos-riddled pages and leave you crying for more.
Elle Magazine
'Sustained by a momentum that has the crushing inevitability of fate, the propulsive will have readers sucked in all the way through breathtaking final scenes.'
Publishers Weekly
'A stately, wonderfully written debut novel... (Wroblewski) takes an intense interest in them; and sets them in motion with graceful language ... a boon for dog lovers, and for fans of storytelling that eschews flash. Highly recommended.'
Kirkus Review
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Customer Reviews
This is a book of incredible power: it is beautifully almost poetically written, yet it is also very raw and personable. The plotline follows Hamlet, so you can guess vaguely what is going to happen, yet every page delivers a shock. As the denouement came ever closer I found myself reading more slowly, feeling sick with nerves.
Edgar, the protagonist, is a mute boy living in a closeknit family which breeds and trains dogs. The happy unit is blown apart by the sudden and shocking death of his father. As his uncle becomes ever closer to his mother, Edgar becomes more and more isolated. Upon his return, justice is served in a most unexpected fashion, no matter how well you know The Bard's story.
I will be buying this book for everyone I know. It left me breathless, tearful and overwhelmed; a real rollercoaster of a novel, the like of which I have not read in a long time. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
The tension builds slowly but relentlessly, right up to the final pages. From the moment that Claude first appears in the book, you know that something bad is going to come of it. There's a scene when they are playing canasta together and he says to Edgar "You can get anything you want in this world if you're willing to go slow enough". At the time Edgar thinks little of it, but to the reader it's a red flag screaming "Alert! Alert!"
Having said that, there were also many things that annoyed me about the book. Maybe it's me, but every time something pivotal happens it seemed to be written in such an obscure way that I was never quite sure what had actually happened. These were major plot points and I would have to read and re-read them to decipher what had taken place. There was SO much about dogs (which I was okay with for the most part) but the two sections written from the point of view of one of the dogs felt like overkill. I would instead have liked to understand Edgar's mother Trudy better. To me there was never a satisfactory explanation for where she was coming from or what she did. It felt like Wroblewski had mapped out what role she was going to play in the story (taking his cue from Hamlet) and then had to belatedly create a motivation for that behaviour, rather than having her actions arise naturally because of who she was.
As other reviewers have commented, the ending of the book is a let down. It's too melodramatic and it doesn't satisfactorily resolve Edgar's crusade. (Also, needless to say, its obscurely written). I was also disappointed that the front flap of this book gives so much of the story away. If you haven't read it yet, don't read the front flap!
Like I've said, the concept for the book was great. A mute boy and his dogs, a ghost story, things not quite as they seem, all very intriguing and I did want to keep reading, but at times it was a chore.
At over 550 pages, this is a long slog and it suffers for it. The book moves at a snail's pace at times. Far too long was spent dwelling on Edgar's early life before the story picked up around the middle of the book. But even then it was dragged out. I read a good book in a few days, but I had to force myself to keep picking this up over a few weeks, although I did read that last 150 or so pages in one afternoon because the pace picked up dramatically.
You should also beware if, like me, you like to know how a story ends. I don't want to be left guessing, but for me there were huge question marks at the end and I felt a bit cheated after having put so much effort into reading it! This is quite a personal point of view, however, and so you should bear that in mind.
All in all I am glad to have read the story because it was interesting but you have to be prepared to knuckle down and put the effort into reading it.
& not quite satisfied. Left me with a strange feeling ! Read more
It's certainly very well written, without being difficult to read. Read more
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