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 (Book 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 '[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 'Remarkable.' Uncut magazine (Book 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
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
by Bret Lott
by Alan Drew
by Uwem Akpan
