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The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel 282 reviews Product Rating : 3.5 .................................................................................................................... Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: It's gutsy for a debut novelist to offer a modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin--particularly one in which the young hero, born mute, communicates with people, dogs, and the occasional ghost through his own mix of sign and body language. But David Wroblewski's extraordinary way with language in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle immerses readers in a living, breathing world that is both fantastic and utterly believable. In selecting for temperament and a special intelligence, Edgar's gr ... at 88 Stores Lowest Price : $12.00 |
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| Magical storytelling! 2008-09-06 This retelling of Hamlet is intriguing and compelling...and any dog lover will revel in the dogs! Edgar and his family draw you in and keep you there...  By Peggy M. Outon |
| Review The Story of Edgar Sawtelle 2008-09-06 A debut novel with a haunting impact. Difficult to put down. Beautifully descriptive, tantalizingly frustrating in parts. Not a light fairy floss novel, it will be one of the few novels that I will reread again and I suspect again after that. David Wroblewski will be an author to watch. Highly recommended read.  By K. D. Jarvie |
| Life is to short! 2008-09-05 The book was written well and kept me reading it, but in the end I was left wanting a different story altogether. Life is to short to read such a depressing book.  By B. Powell |
| Story telling at its best. 2008-09-04 Excellent story telling technique makes material that is not at first glance the best for a suspenseful page-turner into just that. Vivid descriptions advance, do not distract from, the story. By C. Erlinger |
| Sometimes interesting, occasionally drags 2008-09-04 That David Wroblewski can write is plain to any reader of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, in places his prose literally sing off the page. Likewise, he has done an excellent job of researching his material, particularly as it relates to dogs and breeding, a topic clearly close to his heart. His decision to make Edgar mute also shows a great deal of creativity and serves to deepen the work considerably. However, the book suffers from several short comings, some of which are not uncommon for first time novelists, others of plot, and still others which might have been handled by a good editor. To begin with the third, at more than 550 pages, the book feels way too long, with a great deal of background information which fails to come to any fruition later in the book. The author's choice to write an homage to Hamlet makes this particularly clear; while no one has ever accused the Bard's longest play of brevity, the Ghost of Act I, scene 4 here appears to young Edgar, around page 230! A good edit could well have slimmed down that first half and tightened this novel. Also, an editor would have pointed out how many of these characters appear two-dimensional; where the characters of Hamlet are among the most complex in the history of literature, here the villain Claude becomes a rather flat uninteresting socio-path. Trudy (Gertrude) becomes the font of the good mother. Only Edgar (and his dog Almondine) show signs of the necessary depth to be consistently interesting. On another note, Mr. Wroblewski follows the modern vogue, jumping from character to character, even to one of the dogs. While this sometimes serves to improve a work, here it feels often unnecessary and sometimes forced, a way of avoid the work of displaying a character's motivations through actions by instead leaping inside his head. Where The Story of Edgar Sawtelle offers much to admire, it also leaves the reader wondering how much better it could have been had the many fine authors on the jacket spent less time on effusive blurbs, and more offering the writer notes on how to sharpen his story.  By J. A Magill |
