The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Another most wonderful book. This book is a little slower-moving than the one I read before this, but, oh, it is powerful. It is simple, almost idyllic, and then, bang, everything explodes. If you had told me the book would end the way it does, I wouldn't have believed it.

How simply the author draws the characters. How utterly real they are.  How does the author, David Wrobelewski, do it?

The novel is understated, and yet all the emotions the book arouses...

Blurbs about the book say it's about a boy who cannot speak. He cannot make any sounds. He is not deaf. Even as a newborn baby, he couldn't make sounds.  That is Edgar. The book is about him a lot, yet this is not a book about a boy who cannot speak. It is about Edgar. And yet it is significant that he cannot speak.

Jean Paul Sartre  wrote that all the troubles of the world come because we do not use a simple speech.

When Edgar suspected that a murder had been committed and who the murderer was, he kept his suspicions to himself. Edgar did not speak up. He could have. He used sign language very well. If only he had told his mother. How could he have not? But he didn't. Had he spoken up, it has to be that further tragedies would have been avoided. Edgar didn't use simple speech. He didn't speak up at all.

This book, incidentally, was also an Oprah's Book Club choice.

The range of human beings is unlimited. Unforgettable characters in this book. From the father, the mother, an uncle, the sheriff, the vet, a beautiful dog, to a stranger in another town -- I wanted every one of the unique characters to live forever.

Many of the reviews I read complained that the ending was the wrong ending, that the ending didn't fit. I didn't see it that way. Certainly, it wasn't the ending I wanted.

Reviewers did say that one of the themes of the book was haunting. Well, the ending was haunting.

When the book was over, I yearned to know how the remaining characters fared. Their lives had to have been dramatically changed, and so I keep thinking of the people in the book, like friends in my life from the past that I will never know what happened to them.