"I flat-out loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. . .
. It's a novel about the human heart, and the mysteries that live
there, understood but impossible to articulate. . . . I closed the
book with that regret readers feel only after experiencing the best
stories: It's over, you think, and I won't read another one this
good for a long, long time. . . . There's never been a book quite
like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I thought of
Hamlet . . . and Watership Down,
and The Night of the Hunter, and The Life
of Pi-but halfway through, I put all comparisons aside and
let it just be itself. . . . Wonderful, mysterious, long and
satisfying: readers who pick up this novel are going to enter a
richer world. I envy them the trip. I don't re-read many books,
because life is too short. I will be re-reading this one."
-Stephen King
"I doubt we''ll see a finer literary debut this year. . . . David
Wroblewski's got storytelling talent to burn and a big, generous
heart to go with it."
-Richard Russo
"Don't let the book's massive size fool you: This is a good
old-fashioned coming-of-age yarn.Grade: A"
-Entertainment Weekly
"…here is a big-hearted novel you can fall into, get lost in and
finally emerge from reluctantly, a little surprised that the real
world went on spinning while you were absorbed...grand and
unforgettable."
-Washington Post Book World
"The most enchanting debut novel of the summer....a great, big,
mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana...One
of the great pleasures of The Story of Edgar
Sawtelle is its free-roaming, unhurried progress,
enlivened by the author's inability to write anything but
guilelessly captivating prose."
-New York Times
"Whether you read for the beauty of language or for the intricacies
of plot, you will easily fall in love with David Wroblewski's
generous, almost transcendentally lovely debut novel...the scope of
this book, its psychological insight and lyrical mastery, make it
one of the best novels of the year...."
-O Magazine
"In this beautifully written novel, David Wroblewski creates a
remarkable hero who lives in a world populated as much by dogs as
by humans, governed as much by the past as by the present.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a passionate,
absorbing and deeply surprising debut."
-Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune
Street
"A literary thriller with commercial legs, this stunning debut is
bound to be a bestseller."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Edgar Sawtelle is a boy without a voice, but his world, populated
by the dogs his family breeds, is anything but silent. This is a
remarkable story about the language of friendship - a language that
transcends words."
-Dalia Sofer, bestselling author of The Septembers of
Shiraz
"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a wooly, unlikely,
daring book, and wildly satisfying."
-Mark Doty, New York Times bestselling author of
Dog Years
"A stately, wonderfully written debut novel…[Wroblewski] takes an
intense interest in his characters; takes pains to invest emotion
and rough understanding in them; and sets them in motion with
graceful language… a boon for dog lovers, and for fans of
storytelling that eschews flash. Highly recommended."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An excruciatingly captivating read…Ultimately liberating, though
tragic and heart-wrenching, this book is unforgettable."
-Library Journal (starred review)
"The Great American Novel is something like a unicorn - rare and
wonderful, and maybe no more than just a notion. Yet every few
years or so, we trip across some semblance of one.... [an]
extraordinary debut."
-Elle
"The author's spellbinding first novel…is nearly impossible to put
down."
-Kirkus Reviews, First Fiction Special