The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

In a perfect world no one would know, but of course, it’s not a perfect world … I remember when I first read A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley. Since so much is being made of the parallels, though, do you worry about readers picking up your novel with preconceived notions about how it’s going to unfold? Edgar being mute is the exact opposite of Hamlet’s hyperverbal nature. There are parts of the book that have no relation to Hamlet at all. I preferred to pick and choose the elements the served the main story of Edgar and Almondine.

It didn’t interest me as much to follow things to the letter. Well, I never treated the play as a road map per se, more as a source to draw from. But one afternoon, maybe ten or twelve years ago, I was thinking about how to write this story idea I had in mind about dogs, and all of a sudden my brain started juxtaposing the Hamlet story with another about a remote farm near the wilderness.ĭid having Hamlet as a road map make it easier to tell this story as a result? Hamlet is one of my favorite plays - I saw the movie version starring Laurence Olivier many times in college, and I was also briefly a theater major, so that’s how my interest in it began. Was that a deliberate decision on your part? Edgar’s mother is named Trudy (Gertrude), his uncle is Claude (for Claudius), and even Almondine, a dog, bears some resemblance to Ophelia. The parallels between Edgar Sawtelle and Hamlet are very striking. Wroblewski spoke to Vulture from his Colorado home about his literary influences, reader preconceptions, and why authors feel compelled to write about their dogs. But David Wroblewski’s sweet, suspenseful (nearly 600-page) story, about a mute teenager and his faithful companion, his dog Almondine, begs for more than just buzz.

When a debut novel arrives with a rapturous blurb from Stephen King, as The Story of Edgar Sawtelle does, it’s hard not to, at least, well, give it a look - and that was before the book scored a glowing review in the Times.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski