21. The Art of Racing in the Rain

Book 21: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein (A++)

First of all.... GO OUT AND GET THIS BOOK NOW!!!!! IT IS AMAZING!!!
Now with that said, here's why:
Told from the viewpoint of a lab mix named Enzo, the reader watches the makings and times of Enzo's family. At the brink of his death, Enzo describes living among this family and how when he dies, he expects to turn into a man... his one true wish... based off a TV show he saw on Mongolia. Denny, his master, is a "minor league" race car driver looking for work. He has the amazing ability of racing a car while it's raining while everyone else crashes and burns. He acquires a wife, a beautiful woman named Eve. Together, they bring home a baby girl named Zoe, whom Enzo protects to the very end. Tragedy strikes, and Eve falls ill with a brain tumor. After her death, Eve's parents sue for custody of Zoe saying they have better means of providing for her. A three year battle ensues while being told through the eyes of an amazingly intellectual and intuitive dog.
I must say that the antagonist grandparents... I seriously want them to jump out of the pages of the book and appear before me just so I can punch them in the face!! Those rats!!! How dare they try to take a little girl away from her father!! It was sincerely heartbreaking to read about Zoe playing with her toys and repeating meaningless chants her grandparents had coached into her head to explain that everything "will be okay."
Enzo is a wonderful narrator full of spunk, sarcasm, humor, and sincerity. His one mission is life is to protect his family. His one dream is to become a man and use opposable thumbs.

When trying to prove that man's closest relative is the dog and not the monkey, he says, "Case-in-Point #2: The Werewolf
"The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into... A monkey? I think not" (20)!
The book really demonstrates how when a dog's family goes through tragedy or stress, it affects the dog too. Just because they don't have a soul or the logical thinking of a human being doesn't mean they don't feel just as strongly as we do.
Here, Enzo explains pain when Eve begins experiencing the telling migraines of the brain tumor: "The intensity and arbitrary nature of Eve's affliction was far beyond Denny's grasp. The wailings, the dramatic screaming fits, the falling on the floor in fits of anguish. These are things that only dogs and women understand because we tap into the pain directly, we connect to pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face. Men, on the other hand, are all filters and deflectors and timed release... They have no idea that the manifestation of their affliction... is merely a symptom, an indication of a systemic problem... Suppressing the symptom does nothing but force the true problem to express itself on a deeper level at some other time" (62-63).
The book was amazing, descriptive, heart-warming, and raw. And of course as with all animal novels, I cried at the end. You can always foresee the ending of a book with an animal as the main character. Like Marley & Me and Where the Red Fern Grows, the humans continue with their lives and the animals pass on. The same holds true with Enzo's life, yet this time the reader knew from Chapter 1 that Enzo was going to die as he knows it is time and Denny even schedules a non-round trip visit to the vet. Still what's amazing here is that while the dog dies, the story continues for just a chapter more........ Read it!!! You'll love it!!

Works Cited:

Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain. 

New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Print.