048. The Art Of Racing In The Rain (2008).

The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein (2008).

This is a memoir of Enzo the philosopher dog.

Sounds cheesy, right?

You could not be more wrong!!

This book will make you smile, laugh hard, get sentimental and at the end,

Enzo will make hard man cry with joy.

For all the readers constantly looking for feel-good books, THIS is what you have been looking for. 

This book is easy to go through (all chapters are 5 pages or less) and absolutely delightful to read. 

An Instant Classic.

I LOVE THIS BOOK AND YOU WILL, TOO.

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layers. –Basically, this book is all about Enzo and his observation of the world around him. Naturally, owner Denny is the center of the attention because he is Enzo's master. Other characters are all receiving less attention varying by their rolls and how much Enzo cares for them.

Enzo. The philosopher dog. For some unknown and delightful reason, Enzo is born with the brain of scholar and the mind of philosopher and is a lot smarter than most of humans around him. And because of this, he is constantly resentful of the fact that there is no way for him to communicate properly with humans. What he really really wants is human tongue to speak and one long thumb to control TV remote. That’s why ever since he sees one in TV, he really really really wants Stephan Hawking computer chair. Hilarious.

Because of his owner Denny, he becomes a racing fanatic. He probably has more knowledge of racing than any drivers out there.

Pancake is his favorite food. Banana, for some reason, is the next.

He hates crows with passion and the feelings are mutual. There is one chapter explaining the reason behind it which involves lots of shits, literary. It will stay with you for long time....

He has a clear and crisp mind of scholar who analyzes the situation with data and knowledge and experience and can draws out the most suitable solution for each problems. That saying, he also knows how strong his animal instincts are and trying hard to fight against them all the time without much success. For example, his pride won’t allow him to stay under the table for a little munches during the dinner time but he is happy to catch the ball or branches even if it is absolutely stupid thing to do and he knows it.

When he is extremely confused or emotionally devastated, his animal nature takes him over and Enzo becomes a vicious hunter as he is supposed to be. When he heard what happens to Eve, he can’t help himself but running wildly like an animals and attacking a squirrel without any reason than that he can just do it.   

Enzo explains all life’s mystery through the eyes of formula racer: how they control the situation, avoid the accidents, deal with crisis, maintain the lead and find the solution in extreme circumstances. He should make an excellent councilor.

He firmly believes that in his next life, he will be the greatest racer ever. You will find the answer for that question at the end of the book. For all the books I’ve ever read, this ranks in top-5-great-ending-category. Pure magic.

Denny. An excellent racer who just doesn’t get any break he needs to become the greatest. He has all the tools to become the one but circumstances just won’t allow it to happen so far.

Like all great racers, he is extremely patient, logical, focused and fast and furious when he needs to be. He is a great father, great husband, great dog owner, great team mate, just really good guy to be around with.

When he faces an adversaries (big or vicious), he waits his chances counting his options waiting patiently until off course he sees the opening. Then he attacks with speed and precision like all great racers.

Maxwell and Trish. Grandparents from hell. Even if they are extremely rich, they complain about everything they see all the time.

They hates Denny and Enzo and always trying to persuade their daughter to dump him. Also, they try to isolate Zoe from Denny by brainwashing her and threatening lawsuits. Like I said, the worst possible grandparents and humans you can possibly imagine. Their vicious characteristics are good comparison to Denny’s decent personality. Every good novel needs a colorful villains. We have evil twins here.   

To Enzo’s trained (?) eyes, they look/act identical. So he calls them evil twins.

Eve. Denny’s lovely wife. She is the love of life for Denny. The only mystery of her life is how come a girl like her comes from evil twins.

 Zoe. A daughter. She becomes the center of battle between Denny and evil twins.

Also, Enzo mentions all his heroes’ names here all the time: Senna, Chinetti, SabellaRose etc. and in his opinion, Denny is as good as Senna.

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lace. –After all the driving and competitions, Denny now settles in Seattle. There, he meets Eve, marries her and has Zoe with her after off course he picks up Enzo from local dog farm.

He works hard to save up for the race because apparently you need to come up with certain amount of money in order to race if you are not s superstar with tons of sponsor.

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lot. – This is Enzo’s memoir so it starts with his monologue at the end of his life. He wants to talk about his wonderful and very eventful life before his time is up.

It starts from a farm where Enzo is born from one big mother dog who doesn’t really care about her sons because there are too many of them. Enzo from day one realizes that he is different from any of his brothers or even a mean farmer who breed them. He is a lot smarter than any animals or any humans. Within a few weeks of his birth, he gets picked up by Denny and the rest is a history.

Denny goes through a lot in his life and all the important events of his life, all the ups and downs, are witnessed by Enzo and his brilliant brain which remembers everything.

Overall storyline is quite straight: Denny gets himself a wonderdog Enzo who understands human language which off course Denny never finds out ever. And a boy meets a girl, Eve, falls in deeply love, has a beautiful daughter, Zoe. Good so far.

Nothing good lasts forever. So Eve gets sick, Denny has to postpone his dream of being a champion racer to take care of his family. Tough time.

Eventually, Eve passes away. Evil twins com in and trying to take Zoe away from Denny because “That’s what Eve wants” according to Evil twins. No consideration of Zoe’s feeling whatsoever. And they call themselves grandparents. Pathetic.

Denny faces uphill battle. They are rich enough to hire top lawyers who know what they are doing. So they don’t waste a second to attack at where it hurts most: Denny’s wallet. They try hard to squeeze him until he goes belly up and gives up. 

Denny, being a great racer who knows everything about how to fight the long race, hangs on it tough. But after long battle, Denny almost burns out and almost gives up. But, just before he signs the paper admitting his defeat, Enzo who has been in Denny’s side for entire process, gets pissed at Denny for giving up the fight, and at himself for not being able to do anything at all, grabs the paper, jumps out of the window and literary pisses on it!!

After a hearty laugh which he hasn’t had for a long time by now, Denny regains his composure and decides to fight till the end.

What happens at the end? Well, I’ll just say this: this book has probably happiest happy ending this kind of book can ever offer!!!

Also, there is a delightful surprise at the very end of the book.

I LOVE THIS BOOK!!

V

erdict. – A really interesting book you can go through in three days. It’s easy to read, easy to understand and really easy to fall in love with.

Enzo draws lots of interesting advices of life out of racing legends and their memorable games/quotes/lives and all of them are down to Earth, often funny and all very simple but hits the mark every time. Time to time, I have to put the book down and think about what he just says and how that applies to my life.

The one thing I really like about this book is the way the writer finishes this book. Instead of dragging out story like all feel-good books are tend to doing, you know, the author here wraps it up with only one chapter, 4 pages total. At the very last chapter which is also the climax, instead of getting emotional or explaining everything, he just cuts it crisp and sharp leaving out all the unnecessary details and leaves them to readers’ imagination. And yet, those 4 pages are worth gold making it totally worthwhile for readers who read through every pages till very end, not that this book is boring or anything (totally opposite, in fact ).

Again, this is a feel-good book at its BEST and you can also pick up a few important life lessons from Enzo, too.

Go ahead and buy one. You absolutely have nothing to lose and everything to gain. It’ll make your day bright. For a while. 

 

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