Reminded me of John Irving's quiet moments -- the delicate melancholy, the voice within. The Hamlet parallels are not at all subtly done, and I suspect I would have enjoyed the book more had they not been so unambiguous. There's something profoundly calming & "inner" about this book, so much so that the ending comes as a bit of a sharp shock, even knowing it's coming. Paced very slowly, very quietly, and yet I found it deeply compelling -- I hardly put it down for two days.

Finished it the other day and I land about dead center on this one. There was much I enjoyed and I would defintely read another novel by this author. But overall, I thought it was weighed down by its own ambitions. It needed more editing and many of the human characters never really took shape -- they seemed more symbols. But the descriptive writing was often effective, I loved the dogs and I'm a cat person and once I got some momentum going, he kept me involved in the story --- that is till we got to the last section, which I really disliked and thought was silly. I hoped for more, but I got alot and enough that I'll be curious to read more by Mr. However-you-spell-his-last-name.

Started this week for Sunday's book club. Took a couple of trys getting started - I wasn't much into the mood to commit to something that looks so formidable, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

My book group has decided to read Edgar Sawtelle for our next meeting--hoping for great things.

Plus there’s a lot that was just right. His language is nicely suited to the tale, elegant and tuned into the natural world. Obviously I’m a dog person so I’m slanted that way in the first place, but I thought he wrote the dogs well. It’s always a treat to read someone who’s so carefully observed something that you have too. And much of the book flowed beautifully. But mostly it was the characters that moved me, people and dogs alike. Not necessarily their inner lives or motivations, which fluctuated all over the board in terms of plausibility – just the fact of them. They’ll stay with me a while. Lord, I cried so hard over Almondine I had to go sit outside for a few minutes with my arm around my own flesh-and-blood dog.

Even though there were problems – a series of transitions in the last quarter of the book that didn’t work well, and the last part in the barn wasn’t the climax or catharsis that I think the book wanted, and yeah, it was fat as a tick on a dog’s ear. But that didn’t matter much to me, honestly – I was so emotionally involved with the characters it was like being in love, in the way logic just flies out the window for a while. And it’s been such a long time since a book did that to me. I gave in, I did, I swooned.

Stayed up late finishing this and… I really can’t be objective. I said earlier how I was enjoying it purely as a reader and not a critic, but it goes deeper than that. It’s like he had some kind of infrared Jungian checklist and somehow managed to find out all my childhood fantasies: benevolent and wise dog companion/nursemaid? Check. Super-intelligent semi-wild pack of devoted dogs that sleep with you at night? Check. I guess the only thing worse than being raised by wolves is wishing you were – as a kid I always had a fantasy of a wolf pack appearing on my street to take me away. I wanted a dog who would look out for me like Lassie. So this was like – pardon the crudeness of the simile – finding the porn that gets you off just right.

Just gorgeous.

I’m about 2/3 through and liking it a lot, although it’s a very sad book for the most part. I have my quibbles, and some of the plot stuff strikes me like a Swiss watch in a transparent case—beautifully done, but a little less wondrous for being able to see how it’s put together. But maybe because I’ve just come off of doing a very close and critical read of a first draft manuscript elsewhere—I’m interested in this one as a passenger, not an editor, and I’m enjoying the ride very much.

Any fussing about plot aside, the writing is straightforward and sweet and I really love how he writes dogs.

Also, even though I've always held that dog names should never be longer than two syllables, now I want to get another and name her Almondine.

Wanting to savor every word. And I want dogs to follow me everywhere I go.

This is my vacation book, since I don't have any actual real vacation activities to plan my life around other than eating artisanal cheese (which is not too shabby, come to think of it). So far it's going down easy (both book and cheese), but I'm barely in. Everything I'm reading right now is so BIG.

I'm about 200 pages in and while the prose is lovely, each description expert and evocative, my enthusiasm for the book is on the wain. Wroblewski is an excellent writer, but I'm not sure about his storytelling skills. I've just passed a large chunk that I think could've been cut for the sake of moving things along on the story front. For me, the book is seductive line to line, but I also find myself chaffing for it to get on with it already.

Vocabulary words from the market square, with "old women hawking"...

kimchee - "... a traditional Korean fermented dish made of vegetables with varied seasonings, most commonly referring to the spicy baechu variety ..."

and bulgoki - "... a variety of barbecued beef ... made from thin slices of sirloin or other prime cut of beef. The meat is marinated with a mixture of soy sauce, sugar and other ingredients such as scallions and mushrooms ..."

(with help from Wikipedia)

"Ahead, the alley crooked to the right. Past the turn he spotted the lantern, a gourd of ruby glass envined in black wire, the flame within a rose that sprang and licked at the throat of the glass, skewing rib-shadows across the door."

Even though this scene is from a dark, rainy, South Korean night a few years before I was born in a country I've never visited, I know that alley and that lantern. I'm not sure how the author did it, but he's pulled me right in.

Based on the tremendous enthusiasm for this book here, I promised myself I would save it for August and end up the summer in style with a great big gratifying read. I started it this morning on the subway to work. I only read the five pages of the Prologue and I can tell I'm in the hands of a master storyteller. This is going to be a wonderful ride.

My quibbles:

The writing is elegant but if you are looking for avant-garde experiments with language this is not the book for you. The closest Wroblewski gets to experimenting is the inclusion of a few (mercifully brief) chapters written from a dog's point of view. I was disappointed to discover that in Wroblewski's world dogs think pretty much exactly the way we do. The mystical touches--ghostly appearances, Ida Paine and her cryptic advice--also did not work for me.

Still: I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a good yarn and has a couple of days to devote to it--because if you have to go off to work in the middle of this book you're probably not going to get much done that day.

(x-posted to the forum)

I just this minute turned the last page of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I barely put it down yesterday (I read about two-thirds of it) and I picked it up as soon as I woke up this morning.

It strikes me as a very old-fashioned kind of book, thick and plotty and packed with incident. I've seen comparisons to John Irving, but I think that's unfair to Wroblewski as so much of Irving's recent work is subpar. And this book has a much more naturalistic feel to it than Owen Meany or Garp. I would compare this book more to, say, something that Sarah Waters might write if she decided to set a book at a dog-breeding farm in rural America.

I loved it, but I had quibbles (to follow in another note).

It's a warm feeling when (most) others share my enthusiasm for an especially satisfying read.

Still not done, but this is one of the most absorbing books I've read in years. For me, so far, it is completely living up to everything Pat and Nancy said about it.