What readers think of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, plus links to write your own review.

Well, I hated the ending. However, I did enjoy reading this book. It did leave me with many unanswered questions. I suppose that's what a good book is suppose to do. It's a page turner to say the least.

I read this book on my new Kindle, and by the time I was only about 1/3 of the way through and I KNEW I would read it again. I was thoroughly enthralled by it. I couldn't put it down! I hadn't read anything about it, I really read it on the advice of a friend.
I also was a little disappointed by the end, I guess I was looking for all the answers to all the questions in the story. Now that I've had a little time to absorb it all I realized--- isn't that what makes a story/movie /TV show great? That they leave you wanting more?? Like The Sopranos??, Gone with the Wind?? I say read it! Maybe even read it again!

You know, after the intro and then first few chapters, there was something very familiar going on in this novel. Then I caught on! Author was utilizing character names and tenor and basic plot of Willie S's famous tale about the Prince of Denmark. It was relatively easy to predict what would occur in terms of story-line. To be honest, I thought that this "borrowing" was a bit cheesy. I do have to offer kudos for the author's knowledge of dogs, canine behaviors and motivations though. They were the true surprises of this freshman novel.

I felt much the same way that other reviewers did. the first half of the story was a real page turner and when Edgar went into the woods, a second story began and the first story was left behind.

So many questions were left unanswered for me. The writing was beautiful and original and I expected to be satisfied at the end of the book,but I was not. This book could have achieved greatness, but something went wrong along the way.

I am an avid reader. I have a top twenty favorite book list which I revise occasionally. As I was reading "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," I decided this book would replace whatever book was in, oh, maybe 5th place.

What a story. While I am a woman of an advanced age, and have lived a rather worldly and urban sort of life, I have a dog. The writing, the descriptions, the complex and convoluted plot, the characters, were so superbly rendered, I often felt a physical response to a twist or turn, the walking of the fence with Gar, or countless mornings with the dogs, the touches of the withers, the exquisite wonder of muteness and communication, the scariness of that Impala. Ai yi yi, I could not stop reading. When I did stop, to eat or take a shower, I was jittery about getting back to the book. In fact, for 4 or 5 days, reading was what I elected to do. I asked myself, how can someone write like this, to envelope me into this story? To rope me in?

About half way into the story, I realized that I was IN the story. I cannot recall this ever happening to me before in literature. I was Edgar. I was inside him, seeing the world through his eyes, trying to interpret the last semi-words of father, finding unexplainable items in the grass, uncomfortable with Claude, one with the dogs, especially Almondine. Oh, wow, Almondine, and I became Edgar and dog, savior and saved, poet and grass, confused and seeking.

Well, what I'm trying to say is that I just got into the story and when Edgar's heart beat, mine did. When Edgar stroked Almondine, I did. I watched when Edgar watched. I ran the dogs, I searched the mow, I ran away, I found Henry, I bathed Tinder's paw. I was IN THE STORY.

The me person outside the story was amazed at this.

I was swept along, knowing in my heart that some kind of justice would be done, some kind of truth would be revealed; and especially, the dogs would prevail. Trudy was the thread.

The porch light. For me, that was the final fulcrum upon which the truth would be revealed. I am not allowed to tell you the story, but at the end, I could not believe after all the beauty, the exquisite details of land and love and family and treachery that it would all just poof, burn.

I cannot recall a book more extraordinary that took a wrong turn. Oh, yes, it was probably the way life is, and so now I must mourn, but, in fact, in this book, with Edgar, I wanted a little justice, a little truth.

I am shocked that this book has affected me so much. I can't believe that after this lofty, etherial, gorgeous world has been created, that in the end, it is after all, just ether, just meaningless.

I am devastated. Can you imagine a person writing such a statement about a book?

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!

I loved most of the book, until I got to chapters where the dog's appear to have written their opinions about what was going on. Too fanciful for my taste.
Also, there was never a clear reason why Uncle Claude carried out his mission, which I won't reveal.
What could have been, and mostly was, a fantastically written novel became less so in my mind when the novel took on surreal circumstances.
The family relationship in the first half of the book was dear, the second half, not so much. Too hard to swallow.

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.