TITLE: The Art of Racing in the Rain
AUTHOR: Garth Stein
GENRE: Fiction, Literary
PUBLISHED: 2008
RATING: ★★★★☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon, iTunes
MOBILISM LINK: Read
Description: Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver.
Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through.
A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life...as only a dog could tell it.
Review: I wasn't too sure about reading this book. I'm not interested in race cars, or racing, and all the cover shows is part of a dog’s head. But I was curious; why all the rave reviews? After reading a few pages, I knew why. This is a different kind of dog story; the narrator is the dog! Oh, and what a dog! I adore Enzo! A Lab/Terrier mix, he is everything you could want in man’s best friend. Witty and wise, funny and observant, a furry philosopher who yearns to be human. I don’t know if I’ll ever look at my dog the same way! The writing is poignant, and filled with such tenderness you know the author has lost a beloved pet of his own at some time. The book has many themes; death and rebirth, living in the moment, facing your fears, overcoming life’s obstacles, love, and betrayal. And the quotes! I was highlighting like a madwoman throughout the book.
Set in Seattle, (an excellent setting given the novel's title) this story, sadly, begins at the end of Enzo’s life, as he looks back and gives us a dog's-eye view of the past with his family, promising race car driver Denny Swift, wife Eve, and daughter, Zoe. Enzo is not afraid to die, in fact, he embraces death, because he knows what comes after; he saw it on TV...
In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog’s master whispers into the dog’s ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat or fat is placed in his mouth to sustain his soul on its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog’s soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.
I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.
I am ready.
Enzo remembers the very beginning, being picked from a barnyard litter of squirming pups; Denny lifting him high in the air, exclaiming, "this one." It was Enzo's "first glimpse of the rest of his life."
They move into Denny's Seattle apartment, spending the first year bonding and watching videos of Denny's races. Denny talks to Enzo just like he would a friend, and Enzo listens and observes carefully. He wants to be ready when it's time to become human.
Enzo’s inability to communicate frustrates him. His tongue was designed long and loose, and is very ineffective for speaking. He also believes his dew-claws, (which had been clipped off) were actually evidence of a pre-emergent thumb, and that men had habitually bred the thumb out of certain lines of dog through “selective breeding,” to keep them from becoming adept, “dangerous,” mammals.
As Denny teaches him about racing, Enzo learns to apply Denny's racing philosophies to life...
In racing, they say that your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.
Your car goes where your eyes go. Simply another way of saying that which you manifest is before you.
Enzo believes we create our own destiny...
Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.
Though Enzo’s ultimate desire is to be human, he is not the type to sit around and mope about it. He is a lover of life, and revels in his canine form. There are few things he enjoys more than running through the wet grass in the misty Seattle rain, keeping his snout low to the ground and pretending he’s a vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the smells and life around him. Through all of their trouble’s, Enzo is there for Denny, spurring him on when he’s ready to throw in the towel. Like a good racer, Enzo will never let something that has already happened affect what is happening now.
"You should shine with all of your light all the time."
Denny marries Eve, "the interloper," whom Enzo is just a tad envious of, at first (after all, he’s used to having Denny to himself, and Eve can talk and has thumbs). Soon Zoe is born. Denny is away for The 24 Hours of Daytona Race when the baby comes early, and Enzo must stand in Denny's stead for Zoe's birth.
I admire the female sex. The life makers. It must be amazing to have a body that can carry an entire creature inside. (I mean, other than a tapeworm, which I’ve had. That doesn’t count as another life, really. That’s a parasite and should never have been there in the first place.) The life that Eve had inside her was something she had made. She and Denny had made it together. I wished, at the time, that the baby would look like me.
Enzo grows to love Eve, and Zoe, whom he has promised Eve he will always protect. They are great playmates and best buddies. In between races, Denny works in customer service for BMW. And soon, Eve goes back to work for a big retail clothing company, to provide money and health insurance. Zoe starts daycare and Enzo, now 3 years old, is lonely...
But then everyone moved on and left me behind.
I wallowed in the emptiness of my lonely days. I would stare out the window and try to picture Zoë and me playing Enno-Fetch, a game I had invented but she later named, in which Denny or Eve would help her roll a sock ball or fling one of her toys across the room, and I would push it back to her with my nose, and she would laugh and I would wag my tail, and then we would do it again. Until one day when a fortunate accident happened that changed my life. Denny turned on the TV in the morning to check the weather report, and he forgot to turn the TV off.
Enzo loves television, and his education "really takes off." The History channel, PBS, the Discovery channel; Enzo watches them all, and learns about other cultures, and different ways of life. His boredom is cured, and weekends with the family are great fun.
Zoe celebrates her second birthday party, (where Enzo is the star attraction). The family moves to a new house with a big, sunny yard. Denny goes to France for a Formula Renault testing program; he does so well he is offered a seat in the Enduro Race at Watkins Glen. Life's a smooth ride for awhile, but inevitably, they hit a roadblock. When Eve bends down to pick something up, Enzo smells something inside Eve's head that shouldn't be there. Alas, he has no way to warn them that danger is around the corner. Before long, events steer out of control. Denny's racing career hits a wall, Eve suffers severe and crippling episodes where she feels "like someone’s crushing her skull"...
It was the best of times. Really.
And then it was the worst of times.
Eve refuses to go to the hospital, as she fears they will never let her out. Time passes. There are sometimes weeks between her episodes. On a hiking trip, she fall’s and sustains a concussion. At the hospital, X-Rays are taken, and tragically, Eve is diagnosed with a brain tumor and a bleak prognosis. Denny’s in-laws, Maxwell and Trish, (who always thought Eve could do better) step in to help, and for the sake of convenience, Eve spends weekdays with them. She is eventually moved to a hospital bed in her parent’s living room, and Zoe begins staying at Grandma and Grandpa’s also. "For the sake of convenience." Enzo calls them "the evil twin’s," due to their tendency to dress alike.
The way in which Zoe, now 4 years old, deals with her mother’s sudden illness and absence is gut-wrenching and revealing to Enzo, who tells us...
She called me over to the corner of the yard by the spigot. On the wood chips lay one of her Barbie dolls. She kneeled down before it. “You’re going to be okay,” she said to the doll. “Everything is going to be okay.” She unfolded a dishcloth that she’d brought from the house. In the dishcloth were scissors, a Sharpie pen, and masking tape. She pulled off the doll’s head. She took the kitchen scissors and cut off Barbie’s hair, down to the plastic nub. She then drew a line on the doll’s skull, all the while whispering softly, “Everything’s going to be okay.” When she was done, she tore off a piece of masking tape and put it on the doll’s head. She pressed the head back onto the neck stub and laid the doll down. We both stared at it. A moment of silence. “Now she can go to heaven,” Zoë said to me. “And I’ll live with Grandma and Grandpa.” I was disheartened. Clearly, the weekend of respite Maxwell and Trish had offered Denny was a false one. I had no clear evidence, and yet I could sense it. For the Twins, it had been a working weekend, an effort to establish an agenda. They were already sowing the seeds of their story, spinning the yarn of their propaganda, prophesying a future they hoped would come true.
Denny and Enzo spend weekends with Eve, both of them feeling helpless and unneeded. Eve wants Zoe to get to know her extended family, so Denny brings Zoe and Enzo to her relative's cabin for a week to meet them. It is there that they meet Annika, a teen-age cousin of Eve's, who will cause much grief in their lives at a later date.
Denny's troubles have just begun, for there are some harrowing curves ahead in the road that is life. Eve's swift decline and death, a very long custody battle over Zoe brought on by the “evil twins”, and bogus criminal charges brought on by the spurned teenage Annika.
The way Enzo regards our human nature is charming, and he has much to teach us, also...
Here’s why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another’s conversations constantly. It’s like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.
I close my eyes and listen vaguely in a half sleep as he does the things he does before he sleeps each night. Brushing and squirting and splashing. So many things. People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes.
[The Art of] Racing in the Rain is a metaphor for getting through life. After all, aren’t we all drivers on the racetrack of our life? With it's own slippery slopes, sharp turns, and unexpected storms that we must maneuver through? One mistake, one slip-up, and we can careen out of control... Just like your car, your life goes where your eyes go.
As for the ending? In Enzo's words...
When I return to this world, I will be a man. I will walk among you. I will lick my lips with my small, dexterous tongue. I will shake hands with other men, grasping firmly with my opposable thumbs. And I will teach people all that I know. And when I see a man or a woman or a child in trouble, I will extend my hand, both metaphorically and physically. I will offer my hand. To him. To her. To you. To the world. I will be a good citizen, a good partner in the endeavor of life that we all share.
I know it’s true; racing doesn’t lie.
As much as I love this story, not everything about it is perfect. Denny's run of bad luck is kind of a stretch... If I had to go through half of his ordeals, I'd have lost my mind! I also would prefer more background on Denny's parent's and his in-laws motivations. And I couldn't help wondering, "if Enzo is so smart, why doesn't he bang out some morse code with his head, like the grievously injured soldier in Johnny Got His Gun? But then I'd remember that this is Enzo's story, and he's not privy to everything. Still, those points are minor compared to all the glories this novel offers. Highly recommended for all readers!
