Rated of 5
by EMB Mystery upon mystery...
Wow! this is an Elvis Presley book: Love it or Hate it. The reader's uproar is similar to when 2001 A Space Odyssey was first released in theaters...many felt cheated at most and frustrated at least over the ending. No matter...Yes, there where those portions in this book, that, to me, were confusing. Yet they (all) had a 'flavor' worth tasting! The Old Clerk in the store? Haven't we all known someone similar? Almondine? Haven't many of us known a similar dog? Or felt we were having real conversations with or have seen a ghost? You don't NEED to have read Hamlet or understand the Bard. That's what a mystery is supposed to be all about! And Wroblewski has written this in spades!
Edgar is/was exactly what the story needed...a very well developed 'main' character amongst several 'main' characters. This is a story not just with heart...but deep, at once painful and yet often joyous heart. Don't attempt, as you read this book, to fully understand all aspects of it...Rather rejoice in the lives of all those within the story...and do look for metaphors in YOUR life...not necessarily Hamlets...Finally, Yeah! wouldn't a short "story," perhaps on-line, (by) Wroblewski, about what Essay was REALLY going to do at the end...Enjoy!
Rated of 5
by Sheldon Kelly Does this book have a category?
Gripping. Well-written. A direct shot narrative with masterful imagery: you always know where you're headed. So, I was initially excited - here, perhaps, was the American masterpiece of this quarter-century. Indeed, one brilliant, heart-breaking chapter on an old dog named Almondine may well make the cranky old Harold Bloom's critical canon. Of course, the plot is cribbed from a Shakespeare tragedy, as you've probably read. Which went unnoticed by me at first. Anyway, I thought, this Hamlet device won't follow all the way through, will it? Alas. The tale becomes so mixed with ghosts and realism I wondered what genre I was reading? Magical realism? Which offers easy transitions for writers lost within a maze of their own making: if a character is trapped on a rooftop, requiring more word twists than is known in which a realistic escape can be fashioned, well, do a Toni Morrison - have the character simply 'fly' away. In this case, have a rain ghost issue forth a cryptic tip; or a caricatured country store clerk-seer issue dire warnings. Or is it a thriller? Because it is a murder-thriller. Or literary realism? Because it is as realistic as they come, one section with perfectly tuned humor, even as another ghost yet lurks. Or is it a modern tragedy, a'la Theordore Dreiser, our now-unread 30s' Nobel Laureate, who wrote badly, but whose sprawling no-winners tales always fascinated. I mean, even the book jacket text spells out 'tragedy.' Well, yes and no - yes, because it is after all, as mentioned, Shakespearean; but No, because there are in fact winners here, even if they aren't human. So, in summation - I found this book sui generis, a cocktail of genres, a potpourri of good writing, beautiful evocations and thought-out structure which, God knows, might one day be taught in some MFA class. And then there's this: I had wondered why Stephen King blurbed the jacket - and as I reached this good book's conclusion, it became ever more evident: 'Oh, yes. I see now. That again.' And then I wondered: would this story have been complete if written solely in any of the genres I've mentioned? Hardly; it had to be the cocktail that it is, perhaps the creation of a new form entirely - one which requires true literary craft, while employing a whole bag of tricks. Although, personally, I wish the author had done it the hard way, without ghosts and seers and their tips and clues, and with some graspable human redemption. But, frankly, to paraphrase Stephen King's jacket blurb: I'll probably read it again.
Rated of 5
by Worder1 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Picked up this (weighty) book, got home on a rainy afternoon, opened it, and left time behind. A truly good read that gives a reader something to think about. I loved the old woman (kind of spooky) behind the store counter - and dreamed about this book - the writing brings the story to life. Not a "happy" and predictable book - a solid good story. Highly recommend it.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Judge rules unused Borders gift cards to be worthless(May 23 2013) Borders owes nothing to holders of roughly $210.5 million of gift cards that had not been used by the time the bookstore chain shut down, a Manhattan federal...
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