Book Review: The Art of Racing in the Rain
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I thought the choice to make the narrative voice that of the dog was interesting. It limited perspective in some ways, but it made you think about things a little harder. Ultimately, though, I found it annoying that the dog was not really fish nor fowl. He was a dog who was aspiring to be a person, and to understand things, but either he didn't understand things that I wanted to know about (like how the main couple worked), or he read a lot of internal motivation into something that seemed like it should be opaque to dogs, like courtroom proceedings.
The arc of the book was very straightforward. Hero has everything going for him, hero encounters terrible times but refuses to give up, hero is rewarded in the end for his perseverance. Hopefully that is not too much of a spoiler. The plot is not the interesting part of this book to me, but the people are. I liked the description of a lawyer as being shaped like a B, and being full of B words, like brash and bold and blustery.
Perhaps I am spoiled by my other readings, but I found the emotional depth pretty flat. Although there are a lot of emotional events, they are filtered through a dog's perceptions.
Read if: You are looking for something short and accessible to impress the book club with. You are jonesing for books with unusual narrators. You like reading snippets of car racing without any actual depth.
Skip if: You have high expectations about emotional resonance. You don't want to read about custody cases or death. You are my sister. The zen of racecars will leave you unmoved.
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