Reviews

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

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trin's review against another edition

1.0

I am halfway tempted to dismiss this as a “man’s book.” I don’t feel comfortable doing that however, as 1) I have had way too many women tell me that they adored this book, that it made them weep and filled them with joy and cleared that pesky rash right up; and 2) if a dude dismissed pretty much anything as a “woman’s book,” I’d want to punch him in the throat. So, fair’s fair. This is not a “man’s book.” But it is a book written by a man with, I think, a seriously dim understanding of women and, quite possibly, people in general.

This is a book about a man called Denny. Denny is practically a saint. He loves his wife and his daughter and his dog, and for them—only for them!—he puts his dreams and his career as a *cough* professional race car driver on hold. When his wife gets cancer, he adheres to all of her wishes, including letting her and their daughter live with his creepy controlling in-laws. And when, while the rest of the family is packed away at said in-laws, a young, nubile, non-blood female relative brazenly attempts to seduce him, does Denny take her up on this offer of no-strings-attached sex? No! He bravely fends off her advances! Just like he refuses to give in when, after his wife’s inevitable death, the horrible in-laws try to gain custody of his daughter—going so far as to use a false accusation of rape by the duplicitous teenage seductress to improve their case! In the face of all this, wouldn’t most men give up and despair? But Denny—Denny the professional race car driver stays strong!

Yeah, okay. This may not be a “man’s book,” but that is a male fantasy if I ever heard one.

The only thing that makes this book at all believable is that it’s narrated by Denny’s dog. Denny’s dog is a dog—although, much to my disappointment, not an exuberant pup like Up’s Dug; Enzo instead sounds (as he would proudly assert) almost human—and thus he is loyal to a fault, and thus one can sort of see how Enzo-the-dog would see Denny-his-human as near-perfect. Enzo’s love for Denny is moving, and some early passages about their relationship were the only ones in the book that really worked for me. They were also, I suspect, what made so many of the people I’ve talked to—women and men—adore this book. Assuming you can ignore everything else about the story, I can sort of see where they are coming from there.

But I can’t ignore everything else about the story. Dog narrator or not, this is still a story about a perfect man persecuted by cartoonishly evil grandparents and almost left in ruin by, you know, one of those oh-so-common fake rape accusations. Have men at some point been falsely accused of rape? I’m sure they have. And you know: that really sucks. But you know what sucks even more? All the women who have actually been raped and then actually been told that no one would or should believe them, that the case will never go to court, that they guy will walk, that, you know, they were kind of asking for it anyway. And, fine, this may be partially my issues at play here, but that is all I could think about while Enzo praised Denny’s stoic dignity and bemoaned his powerlessness in the face of those evil, evil lawsuits. And I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe a word of this book. Talking dogs—those I am willing to buy. I could even conceivably have been sold on the “oh and also there is reincarnation” twist at the end of the novel. (Um. Maybe.) But Denny’s saintliness and the grandparents’ unadulterated evil and the girl who cried rape—um, nope. Those I cannot buy. Nor do I want to.

Whether or not this is a “man’s book,” it is definitely not a book for me.

moruyle's review against another edition

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3.0

Not really my sort of thing, but fine for what it was. Read for a book club.

amarettto's review against another edition

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4.0

I wanted to love this book, and I was so sure I would because a story narrated by a dog? Sign me up! I don't know precisely why but the entire thing just fell kind of flat, and a book that apparently moved thousands to tears and touched them with the notion of having grit through hardships did absolutely nothing for me. I was waiting to feel invested in the characters, any of them, most of all the dog, and I could not achieve that.

I will give this book credit for being different. A non-standard form of narration as well as tying to a theme (racing) does make it easier to digest a slower moving plot line, but I could not connect with the racing theme, and most of all, I found it a little irritating that the dog was so smart. Most of the appeal of dogs is their innocence and simplicity, and this dog was basically a philosopher. It felt like there was a weird seesaw of when the dog was a dog and when we were in an alternate realm where the dog was a human in a dog's body. To be clear, I don't care which one the author chose but that choice didn't seem consistent throughout the book.

I think this could be up a lot of people's alleys, a fairly reasonable story with a motivational message. It fell a little short of the mark for me.