This book was beautiful. I am in awe of the way Wroblewski uses language, and his descriptions were just so beautiful. I appreciated the multiple perspectives you got throughout the different chapters of the book: in the post interview, he said that the original draft was all from Edgar's POV, but he is so glad he changed that, as the other thoughts give the story a richness and a darkness that most likely would not have been conveyed otherwise. Everything in this book felt deliberate, whether it was the specificity of the dog training descriptions or the ways in which the chapters were broken up. That deliberateness lent itself to the character of Edgar, who always had to be so cognizant of what he was doing or saying in a world that had trouble understanding him.
On that note, I'd like to talk a little about Edgar's silence, and the other kinds of communication he adapts throughout his life. Edgar does not even enter the story as a primary focus for the first thirty pages: the prologue introduces a character who remains nameless (later it makes sense that this character is Claude, or maybe I missed some clues prior), the first chapter is about the man who built the barn and the house where the Sawtelles now live, and then Edgar's birth is not even witnessed. Instead, the focus stays with Almondine, the trusty dog, on the farm while Edgar's parents leave for the hospital and return days later with a small, silent creature. It becomes clear that Edgar is mute, though there is nothing wrong with his physiology that would incite such muteness, but alas. He just did not make sounds. His parents start teaching him sign early on, at the behest of a visiting stranger, and this evolves into their own special language. Edgar also can write notes, communicate in sign with the dogs, and utilize facial and body expression to get his point across. But the most heartbreaking thing, the most crucial moment of his life is defined by his inability to make a noise, to call for help when his father is dying. Silence becomes his curse and his companion when he ventures out away from the barn. It is a long time before he meets the man that turns him around and takes him home. It is a long time before the silence stops eating at him.
The ending was something I was unsure of after closing the book. The fire that tears apart the Sawtelles' barn, the way Edgar and his uncle Claude interact with it and each other, the tragedy of their relationship and the situation it has put them in at the end. I believe we are to assume that they both die in the fire, but on this particular point, the author is circumspect, which I think is important in terms of staying with the tone of the book. How did it make me feel that they both succumbed to the flames? Neither knew the honest truth of what the other had done, and they died trying to hide their secrets and prove their history, respectively. My heart ached after the end of this book, and that is not something one comes across every day.
