Shocked! This was the look on the faces of my fellow book club members when I gave Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain” a thumb in the middle during our traditional opening Thumb up/Thumb down ceremony. It was strongly anticipated that I would not like this book because I am petrified of dogs; I ridicule gimmicky narratives; I do not typically read New York Times Best Sellers; and, most importantly, I despise uplifting endings.
For all the above reasons, I really should have loathed this book, but I did not on two simple grounds: Enzio, the charming narrating dog suckered me in with his jokes and wisdom and the racing metaphors absolutely captured my imagination. In actuality, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a simplistic story of a man, a woman, their child, the man’s dog and the woman’s horrible parents. Not much interesting happens. Man gets dog; man marries woman; dog and woman don’t care for each other too much; woman gets cancer; and the grandparents try to steal the child from her father. In terms of plot, this novel is really sort of puerile until the dog comes along and gives the reader an “under the table” view.
Enzio narrates every detail with a four-legged perspective. We hear from his point of view the details of human mating rituals; we learn what is like for a dog to discover a rancid chicken nugget under a kitchen table; we experience firsthand a dog’s thirst for squirrel’s blood and how that is a magnificent metaphor for irrational acts of human passion. And of course, Enzio charismatically draws us in with his T.V. addiction, hatred of monkeys and ardent belief that he would transform into a human upon his death. Reviewing that list, it still surprises me that this ridiculous book appealed to me, but the success of this book lies in the humanistic portrayal of the universe from a non-human point of view. Furthermore, it gave me that tingling in the nose about to cry feeling many times.
In fact, for a moment or two, I adored Enzio so much that I wished I liked real life dogs (not likely to ever happen). Enzio is a literary device not a dog, a literary device that makes this non-dog-lover’s experience with this novel very different than a dog lover’s encounter. Generally, dog-lover’s were ecstatic about this book. For the non-dog lover, Stein’s book is a light, tolerable read. If you have a few hours to kill, this one will make you laugh and tear up a little.
