As the Vineyard Bookgroup Goes...So Goes the Nation

So once more a book plucked from obscurity by our fearless twosome catapults up the Best Seller List on the NYT. Number six for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/books/bestseller/besthardfiction.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Not sure why though. Neither of us liked it much. Both of us agreed that it was overlong, one of us thought it had too much happening, the other that not enough happened. And what's with all the natural disasters? The tornados, the wind spouts, the fires? We spent a whole week on the Vineyard and were spared a typhoon apparently. Not Edgar---he got them all. He should move to the Vineyard.

We both slogged through though. The individual characters of the dogs we thought were nicely drawn and there was one very engaging character who belonged in another book or in a short story all his own. The dog training is never fully explained so it's a mystery what was so special about the dogs. The author has this annoying tendency to get all vague and "writerly" when something important happens so you're never sure exactly what happened in the important bits (like a murder say) but in the 'whelping pen' it's all clarity and boring detail (unfortunately).

Some of the language was a bit too precious..."the egret rose, white and archaic." Now I'm sure the egret was white but archaic? Other than that he liked the sound of it, it's complete nonsense. Having said that however, one of us who suffered greatly from mosquito bites over the last week forgave him all when she came to his rapturous descriptions of insect repellent that populated the portion when Edgar and his dogs live in the woods. Off! "the magical elixir" Mr. Wroblewski called it and she nodded her head sagely. He could do no wrong there, a master of prose. But then it's away from the glories of OFF! and back to that infernal whelping pen and a complicated bit with syringes, old letters and some natural disasters that neither of us could quite figure out and then it was over. Phew.

Anyway too late now for us to do a recall on all those copies sold. Our Oprah like powers have been unleashed. There is no turning back.