A dog story for the ages
I am completely smitten. The object of my newfound devotion is, alas, fictional. She鈥檚 a heroine of surpassing grace and faithfulness, equaled only by her intelligence and sense of smell. This paragon of virtue is named Almondine. And I should probably mention that she鈥檚 a dog.
Wait! Come back! Would it help if I promise that at no time does she break into song, perform a soft shoe, or crack wise about 1990s pop culture? Nor does she slurp spaghetti or battle the Red Baron. (I happen to find those last two traits endearing in a canine, but I understand some people grow weary of anthropomorphic animals.)
Almondine is all dog. Specifically, she is Edgar鈥檚 dog. And Edgar Sawtelle is the utterly disarming teenage hero at the center of David Wroblewski鈥檚 wonderful debut novel of the same name. Set on a small farm in rural Wisconsin, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle takes all kind of risks. The hero is mute, a few chapters are narrated from a dog鈥檚 point of view, and there are all kinds of ways the novel could have dissolved into a syrupy mess.
Instead, Wroblewski creates a tender coming-of-age story and grafts onto it a literary thriller with strong echoes of Shakespeare and 鈥淭he Jungle Book.鈥� The result is the most hauntingly impressive debut I鈥檝e read all year.
Edgar grows up in a modest farmhouse, surrounded by his loving parents and several dozen dogs, which the family breeds and trains. (This isn鈥檛 the kind of training offered by the local PetSmart; it takes more than a year for them to teach the dogs how to communicate.)
The family business was started by his grandfather, who read the work of geneticist Gregor Mendel and spent his life trying to create a new breed of dog that was marked by its intelligence and humor.
鈥淵our grandfather didn鈥檛 care about breeds. He always thought there was a better dog out there somewhere,鈥� Gar, Edgar鈥檚 father, tells him. 鈥淭he only place he was sure he wasn鈥檛 going to find it was in the show ring鈥�.鈥� John Sawtelle also was very choosy about whom he would sell his dogs to and wasn鈥檛 above 鈥渞escuing鈥� a dog if its new owners didn鈥檛 treat it properly. 鈥淢ost of the time he just sent them a check and told them to get a beagle.鈥� (Speaking as a beagle owner, ha!)
Almondine is the ultimate in 鈥淪awtelles,鈥� as the dogs are known. After Edgar鈥檚 birth, she takes on the job of being his voice and companion. Edgar can鈥檛 cry, so Almondine makes his needs known to his parents, licking his mom awake when the dog hears the baby鈥檚 faint huffing sound. (Edgar鈥檚 inability to speak is never explained; a little girl tells him her grandma 鈥渟ays that before you were born, God told you a secret he didn鈥檛 want anyone else to hear.鈥�)
The companionship between Edgar and Almondine is beautifully written; anyone with memories of a beloved childhood pet will be charmed.
Into this Eden returns Edgar鈥檚 Uncle Claude, who鈥檚 got the family knack with animals but an unsettling manner about him. 鈥淔ixing the barn roof, it turned out, was a perfect job for Claude. It hadn鈥檛 taken long to see how ferociously solitary the man was. A day spent alone climbing the ladder and ripping tarpapered shingles from old planking left him whistling and jaunty鈥�. He might have been earning his keep, but the barn roof was also a convenient surveyor鈥檚 point, a perch from which their entire, insular little kingdom was revealed.鈥�
He and Edgar鈥檚 father have a falling-out, and it looks as if Claude is gone for good. Then Gar dies suddenly, and an overwhelmed Trudy turns to Claude for help with the kennel. The doctor diagnosed an aneurysm as cause of death, but 14-year-old Edgar becomes convinced that his uncle poisoned his father.
That鈥檚 about when a reader notices that Trudy tends to be a nickname for Gertrude and that Claude sounds an awful lot like Claudius. Egad 鈥� Edgar鈥檚 trapped in the plot of 鈥淗amlet.鈥� Run, kid, run! And he does, gathering up his pack and heading for the Canadian woods like a mid-century Mowgli.
Jane Smiley is obviously the most successful author to rewrite Shakespeare onto an American farm, but despite some superficial similarities with her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 novel 鈥淎 Thousand Acres鈥� 鈥淭he Story of Edgar Sawtelle鈥� reads like an entirely different breed. Wroblewski鈥檚 novel is a bit less of a remake, for one thing.
For another, I found 鈥淓dgar Sawtelle鈥� more enjoyable on a personal level than 鈥淎cres.鈥� After all, it鈥檚 hard for an English major not to be tickled by the idea of a mute Hamlet. (Plus, I just like 鈥淗amlet鈥� more than 鈥�King Lear.鈥�) Edgar might be silent, but his story will echo with readers for a long time.
Dog lovers of the world, what are you waiting for? Fetch!
Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor.
