The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Finally finished Edgar Sawtelle and was both disappointed and irritated. It's clearly a first novel. The book labors toward profundity but never arrives. Heaping loads of suffering on your characters is not a surefire strategy to achieve the status of great literature. I had really high hopes when I bought this--high enough that I felt compelled to pay retail for it just so I could read it right away--but it wasn't long before my skepticism awoke. Let's see: a sentimentalized account of dogs, a coming of age story about an amazingly intelligent boy with a peculiar disability, some ghosts, a riff on Hamlet, yeah it's got "Book Club Reader's Guide" written all over it. I'll be curious to see if those folks are let down or manage to convince themselves that tragedy is inherently profound. But the suffering here does not redeem the easy sentimentality, it simply smothers it. The book is ambitious, I'll grant that, and a compelling read despite the ending being foretold, but it is too long and too calculating and in the end The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is most like its primary antagonist: skillfully manipulative and cold-hearted.