Far From Brooklyn

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

I admit that I had no idea what this book was about when I picked it up.  It was just one of those books that I had seen a hundred times in the “Our Staff Recommends…” sections of bookstores.

No one told me this novel featured sentient dogs–thoughtful, serious, caring dogs.

Consider this:

“Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her. All that winter and all through the spring, Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find it.  Sometimes, when she entered a room, there was the feeling that the thing that was going to happen had just been there…”

To be absolutely clear, Almondine is a dog.  (The name sounds like a doomed mulatto barmaid in Southern gothic novel.)

Or try this, even worse – much worse – from a few pages on:

“She crossed the room and paused beside the chair, and she became in that moment, and was ever after, a cautious dog, for suddenly it seemed important that she be right in this: and looking at the two of them there….certainty unfolded in her the way morning light fills a north room.”

Wow! I just can’t imagine how anyone could read this very, very long sentence with anything but dismay. It’s fussier than an old woman’s handbag, and after its wordy and carefully measured wind-up, it manages only to spit up an achingly earnest, self-consciously poetic, utterly meaningless metaphor (and by the way, morning light does not unfold under any circumstance). But that’s not the worst of it.  The worst of it is – this is a dog we’re talking about!

And that’s just about the time that I tossed “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” aside and turned out the light.