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

I thought that this was one of the best books I have ever read. Wroblewski's insight into the minds of dogs took my breath away. Right down to the fact that their feet "smell like popcorn" was right on target. I'm 66 and have raised, trained and rescued dogs all my adult life and simply marveled at his apparent relationship with dogs.

I'm also a retired school teacher and have worked with special needs kids. The coming of age of Edgar was heart warming, sad, funny and so believable. What a wonderful guy and so good with the dogs. His training techniques were brilliant and the care he showed toward the adult dogs and the puppies could be an example for any of us who love and live with dogs.

As for the ending...that's life guys. We can't always have all the answers all the time. Sure it was sad, however, it was believable. Just like real life, we sometimes have to fill in the blanks. It's upsetting in real life as well, but, that's the way it is.

I would strongly recommend this book. Being a retired reading specialist, however, I would tend to recommend it to adult readers regardless of age.
In order to be able to deal with the "unusual" ending and to have it not ruin this beautiful book one needs to understand that not all stories are going to have a predictable ending or one that we necessarily like. In the case of "Edgar Sawtelle" you simply need to put together everything that happened in the book and to Edgar to be able to come up with your own ending. I enjoyed the challenge after getting over the temporary disappointment.

Reader reviews posted by this company comprise the 3rd batch I have read concerning this book; reviews from Barnes and Noble and Amazon are similar, though some more positive. I love this book, really loved it, and was disenchanted by people's hangups with the ending. I long to have the author respond to queries about the ending.
My point of view, at the age of 77, having been a reader and lover of dogs forever, is that the book is a glimpse of life. The setting, characterizations of family, townsfolk especially the doctor folks who befriended Edgar and the noble dogs was that of life, a depiction of life. Most of the time, life ends; it just ends ~ few of us have resolved issues with everyone who has had a part in our lives. Oh, God, how I wish I could have, with some, but it doesn't happen; people die, often unexpectedly, most often so. I had days and weeks of warning when my father was ill, but was young and didn't want to distress him with searching questions. My mom died totally alone, in a place she didn't want to be on the word of an insensitive doctor. Would I have had it different? Of course, but it wasn't to be. The precious boy in this story searched and suffered as most of us do; he did have a "Hamlet" kind of existence, with devoted parents and a bazaar and evil uncle, but the latter's character and plans are predicted in the "prologue" to the book. I have read the love/hate response by reader/reviewers. I'm on the side of the praise and pleas for more from David Wroblewski.

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!

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!

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.

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.

I read other reviews before I posted this (it's an older book) and was surprised by all the controversy about the ending. If you take the Hamlet construct, well, it's brilliant and that story has withstood the test of time! Of course it made me sad but that's was great books do- they bring out our emotions.

I am now looking forward to his newest book: "Familiaris" which will take us back to the grandparents who started the "Sawtelle" dog business. I can't wait!