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 enlarge | Author: David Wroblewski
Publisher: Ecco
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $13.65
You Save: $12.30 (47%)
New (39) Used (31) Collectible (34) from $12.95
Rating:  855 reviews
Sales Rank: 2248
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.5 x 2
ISBN: 0061374229
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780061374227
ASIN: 0061374229
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 If you need a depressant, read this book. January 4, 2009
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was so ready to love this book! I LOVE dogs and have had very strong, close relationships with 2. I love Wisconsin and its northwoods. I have affection for the name Edgar, a village in Wisconsin. And, yet, I would have to agree with most of the 1-star reviews. This book was a huge disappointment!!
 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle January 4, 2009
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Well written, absorbing, very depressing. If you like happy endings, this book is not for you.
 Too much spice in the stew January 4, 2009
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I must admit, this finely wrought, fastidiously stitched narrative has so much detailing that it made me weep. I couldn't help but enjoy the finer encapsulations of the most minute detail--the problem for me, though, all this detailing about this youngster, Edgar, and his rural family didn't really seem to apply. (WAR & PEACE, this clearly is not). Is it any wonder that most of the readers here feel let down after all that reading effort to what comes down to a rather deflating ending to such a minutely etched story?
It really makes me wonder what the editors are doing on the job. I honestly feel that this would've have been a better story if about 300 pages were cut out. It seems that editors today are too shy to do their jobs. Beautiful prose notwithstanding. Too many seasonings will overwhelm the flavorings in the stew. Has anyone ever heard of overkill? Page for page, if this were a film, it would have been about five hours. An unheard of amount of time in today's movies. And if so, it better be good. Right?
To be fair, this is hardly the only over-wrought works of fiction out there today. We have an over-supply of 800 page narratives.(Wally Lamb's latest.) And I don't have the time for them. For its alluring beauty in the writing, though, I kept reading and reading this one. Conclusion? All that pretty prose got in the way of what might have been a strong story. It really seems that less is more. (I--along with many other readers-- wish editors would re-learn this one).
Author abused my precious time January 4, 2009
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I love to read but have very little time to devote to it. So, when I give my time to a book, I choose carefully what to read and then expect the book to give me a nice payoff in the end. With this book, there were all sorts of glowing reviews, I love dogs, and I thought I couldn't go wrong. Initially, it paid me back beautifully. The author is a gifted descriptive writer, the characters were interesting, and the plot seemed rich with possibility. Even when some passages droned on too long (oh for a good editor here!), I stuck with it because I expected that final payoff based on the good things I had read thus far.
Then, when I read the final page, I kept trying to find the "remaining pages", the ones that would make sense of all that I had read, the ones that would give the payoff. Because none of that happened in the final pages as written by the author.
I went back and re-read the final chapters, hoping that I had missed something that would suddenly shed the light that I had obviously missed, but nothing. Finally, out of desperation, I searched for reviews of the book to see what it was that others found so intriguing about the book. That was when I found the hundreds of people who said the same thing I felt about the book. Too bad I didn't seek out the reviews before I believed the highly publicized good reviews.
In the end, I feel like the author lured me on and then stuck his tongue out at me in the last chapters. Shame on him for wasting my precious time in this way. I would like to see other things that this author writes, but I will do a vast amount of research before I go to the expense to buy the book and give up the time to read it.
Lame Ending for an Otherwise Great read January 3, 2009
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I was all set to give this book a 5 star rating, but the ending kept me from doing that. It just took away from an otherwise great read.
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