Racing in the Rain's Garth Stein Reads @ Elliott Bay
Tomorrow night, novelist Garth Stein (Raven Stole the Moon, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets) and his piercing eyes are making a crosstown trek from Stein's Mount Baker home to the Elliott Bay Book Company, where Stein will read from his latest book, The Art of Racing in the Rain (6/25, 7:30 p.m.).
We hear HarperCollins bought it for north of $1 million, so Stein may arrive in one of those vroomy Ferraris so adored in the novel. No word on whether his IRL dog Comet will appear as well.
The doggie set are barking mad about Enzo, the narrator of the novel, being a dog. (Okay, we haven't done an official survey, but you know how dog people are. I.e., they slobber.) That is why there is a picture of a dog's head on the cover, which you may have seen if you've been inside a Starbucks recently.
For locals, it's fun to recognize the Seattle that Stein visits in fiction -- in the novel, there's a life-changing car accident just down the street from where we live. Mercer Island turns out to be where the rich, conservative, snobby people hole up. And who doesn't know all about admiring hot baristas from afar? It's a little funny that Starbucks picked the book up, considering the in-novel espresso haunts are Capitol Hill's Victrola, Bauhaus, and Caffe Vita, where tattooed, pierced hotties are ogled by Enzo's owner's lawyer, played by Oliver Platt in the movie. (What? We're just getting the ball rolling here.)
People have compared The Art of Racing in the Rain to Tuesdays with Morrie, which is either because they work for HarperCollins and want it to sell like hotcakes, or because it's a much more emotional story than you might expect, filled with sturm und drang: in this case, illness and death, a custody battle, and professional car racing. If he, like Mitch Albom, is no great shakes as a stylist, Stein has not as much sap on tap as Mitch. We admit, we were pleasantly surprised by this story about the passions that drive people through their lives, even the worst parts. For more about that, click on.
Enzo the dog, near the end of his life, dreading those little back-leg training wheels they give to dogs with hip dysplasia, understands the passion for the chase, even if he can't always put two and two together when it comes to people. That may be the most realistic (we're guessing, not having been a dog) aspect of Enzo's personality; the back-story that Stein gives him -- of watching a film about reincarnation and suddenly knowing he's a dog as prep for his next life as a human -- is more of an interesting aside than a functioning plot point.
Enzo fancies himself a philosopher, but if so he's a dog first, philosopher second -- Stein mostly avoids the empty, sock-puppet profundities of an Ishmael. The great thing about Enzo is that he's present without thinking about it: he smells, observes, immerses himself. (There's a pulse-pounding few minutes set on a racetrack that answers the question why dogs are so excited to go for rides in the car.)
Things begin lightly: it's just a boy (Denny) and his dog (Enzo). Denny is race car-obsessed and works as a mechanic to pay the bills. Then he falls in love, a daughter comes along, his wife falls ill, and becoming a famous professional racer gets much more complicated. In fact, you're tempted to accuse the Universe of piling on. But this is about "racing in the rain," and the skill it takes. By the time the sun finally peeks through again, you're willing to forgive Denny his one (very) lucky break.
On one hand, what makes the book so lively and fresh -- the unusual juxtaposition of a dog's viewpoint on professional car racing, family life and strife, cancer care, and sexual precocity (a teenager comes on to Denny then gets all Hand that Rocks the Cradle, in the book's weakest, least examined part) -- is also what qualifies it as a "great" summer book.
Enzo is simply an interested observer -- of Denny and what affects him. His life becomes an accounting of the trials that Denny endures and which, in true canine tradition, he endures too. That might (again, have never been a dog) be a rich perspective for a dog, but it's less than what a novelist can achieve when illustrating what goes on in human heads.
This striking act of imagination has other limits, too. There are continuity issues. (Which Stein wrestles with -- how to tell the story when a dog couldn't have seen that part.) You see some of that strain, from trying to pull the plot threads together, from structural hurdles, and you shouldn't. But if you're in a forgiving mood, the book is a rewardingly crunchy treat.
