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.
I LOVE THIS BOOK AND YOU WILL, TOO.
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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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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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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!!
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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.
