What would Hamlet be like if
super-intelligent dogs were involved? Even the proverbial infinite number of
monkeys probably wouldn't have come up with the luminous, deeply touching
version David Wroblewski gives us in his masterful debut novel, The
Story Of Edgar Sawtelle. Wroblewski sets his story in rural Wisconsin, where a
married couple who have devoted themselves to breeding dogs capable of
understanding complex commands gives birth to a son who lacks the power of
speech. As Edgar grows up and begins to discover the complex relationship
between his parents, his father's itinerant brother Claude, and the dogs his
grandfather first selected and bred, he becomes convinced that he is in
possession of secrets that have never been spoken aloud. His quest for answers,
and his questions about the significance of that weighty past, outline a world
of frustrated communication that often uncovers sublime moments of perfect
communion.
Edgar is something of a
substitute, it turns out—a child born after his mother had a tragic
miscarriage. As he tries to figure out the source of the tension between his
uncle Claude and his parents, he discovers that the Sawtelle dogs are all
substitutes of a kind for a wild dog that his father tamed and loved. After his
father dies, Edgar's frenzied guilt is compounded when Claude takes up with his
mother. Edgar begins seeing visions of his father, a shape outlined in rain,
pointing him to a syringe—evidence, he thinks, that Claude killed his
father in order to marry his mother. When his efforts to unmask the murderer
and protect his mother cause another death, Edgar goes on the run with the dogs
he's hand-raised, stealing and living off the land to stay safe from both the
law and the lawless.
In ruminative prose, Wroblewski
spins a tale of old family conflicts that's fresh, original, and full of heart-stopping
tension. In the grip of his muse, he seems to have channeled
his story's wild beauty rather than inventing it. The Story
Of Edgar Sawtelle
provides a window into the poignancy of incomplete lives and the transcendence
that lies just outside the reach of our human senses.