The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

“He thought back on the vision […] that had descended upon him as he shook [the dog’s] paw. It was one of those rare days when everything in a person’s life feels connected.”

The epiphany that rocks Edgar’s grandfather defines the family’s spiritual connection to canines. John Sawtelle, now 25, reads a newspaper article about Blessed Gregor Mendel and his experiments with growing superior peas using genetic bioengineering. This moment of unexpected connection reveals to John that the purpose of his life is now tied to breeding superior dogs. 

“You cannot begin too early to bring the power of language to children whose grasp may be precarious…A person communicates by giving as well as by taking, by listening and by expressing what is inside.”

The advice of this doctor, one of a series of experts that the Sawtelles consult to help understand Edgar’s mutism, underscores the novel’s larger interest in the necessity of communication. It provides context for Edgar’s efforts to connect with his family and his dogs through sign language and his invented language system.

“Edgar got the idea that Claude and his father had slipped without their knowing it into some irresistible rhythm of taunt and reply whose references were too subtle or too private to decipher.”

As in Hamlet and all of its re-imaginings, at the center of Edgar Sawtelle is a palpable but nevertheless mysterious tension between two very powerful and very different brothers. All of the usual dynamics that Edgar considers—good/evil, powerful/weak, heart/head, moral/ immoral—never quite lead him or the reader to understand exactly the nature of the brothers’ complex relationship.