Patricia Harrelson

Last summer, fellow writer Kate Evans turned me on to GoodReads, a website where readers befriend one another and share book titles and reviews. It’s also a place where authors can maintain a page about their published works and invite friends to events.

Here is a review that I just posted on Good Reads for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.

Wroblewski has certainly managed to mix an unusual array of elements in this thoroughly enjoyable book. Employing a setting in the lake country of Northern Wisconsin and a time period some forty years ago, he evokes a sense of displacement–not in the manner of sci-fi but simply offering a time and place that is at once familiar and foreign. The farm where the story is set has a mysterious aura, for the original settler built a wonderful home and barn and then for unknown reasons suddenly departed, selling the place from afar. Then Wroblewski adds a novel breed of dog and a voiceless boy to the mix–a boy who not only communicates non-verbally with the dogs but who also has a strangely believable connection to other spheres as well.

I won’t spoil the story by saying more than that. I’ll just conclude by saying Wroblewski is a fine and compelling story teller as attested to by the huge popularity of this book. I listened to the audiobook version and though it took a bit longer than usual to hook me, by the midway point I was fully invested in the characters’ lives and the intriguing narrative.

Check out GoodReads, and if you do, please invite me to be your friend.