Amazon categorizes Wroblewsi's book as "literary fiction" or "contemporary fiction." Fair enough- there's probably not space in their categorization system for thriller/espionage, coming of age story, historical, magical realism, ghost story, and murder mystery. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was all this, and literature, too.
When I first downloaded a sample of this book onto my Kindle, I read part way through the sample, then decided to pass on it. At first I was entranced by the prose in this book. The scene Wroblewski described was so vivid- every word a color, a texture, a taste, a smell. The problem was, that the book was clearly a thriller set in South Korea during the Korean war. Of course there's nothing wrong with an historical espionage book- but that's just not the kind of book I wanted to read. And, far worse, I could see that the plot was heading toward cruelty to a dog. I'm a huge softy for animals. I decided not to buy the book.
A few months later I was browsing the Kindle bestsellers and came across The Story of Edgar Sawtelle once again. The synopsis made it sound like the coming of age story of a boy in Wisconsin. What? I went back to the sample on my Kindle, muscled through the horrible scene with the dog, and met Edgar.
Wroblewsi refused to pick a genre and stick with it when he wrote The Tale of Edgar Sawtelle. I was surprised again and again, as the book took turns into fantasy and thriller that seemed so at odds with the lives of the plain-folks dog trainers living on a family farm. But it wasn't only the genre that morphed to suit the needs of the story- Wroblewsi's language also transformed to meet every mood necessary to tell his tale. I could tell when something important was about to happen- the prose became crystal clear, detailed to the point of painfully beautiful. When it was time to get to know Edgar, things slowed down, we approached the world in a more plodding, plain prose. The chapters through the eyes of Edgar's best friend and dog captured the character of a devoted animal with more skill than I would have thought possible.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is selling well- it has Oprah's endorsement, and today rests at #10 on the Kindle bestseller list, and is Amazon's 26th overall best selling book. Yet the genre confusion at the opening nearly lost my sale. Maybe I just need to loosen up my genre expectations...but with the advent of the downloadable sample chapter, should writers be thinking more about how the first few pages set the tone of their book?
1 comment:
This will surely be a great hit as it is going to be a collaboration of two prominent producing companies. Basing it from a its excerpt, i think this is really a great story which is worth watching..
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