Last week I finished reading The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. It’s one of the best books that I’ve read this year and it gave me many conflicting emotions as I went through it. The book contains a lot of great stuff about life so I wanted to share some of my thoughts on it.
I won’t attempt to recap the plot here as I’d rather keep it a surprise in case you’d like to read it. I will, however, give a brief overview of the main characters and some parts of the book. Enzo is a dog who narrates the whole story. He lives with his owner named Denny along with Denny’s wife Eve and their daughter Zoe. The story follows them through the different seasons of life. The book’s title comes from Denny’s career in auto racing. He is an exceptionally skilled driver, especially when it comes to driving in rain. This becomes important through the bulk of the book as he and his family navigate some incredibly difficult situations.
I experienced a lot of laughter, frustration, anger, and sadness throughout this book. Stein brilliantly captured what I’ve always thought to be the inner world of a dog. That’s where a lot of the humor originated. Sadness came from some musings on life, death, and unexpected hardships. Anger and frustration came from the injustices Denny experienced at the hands of people and institutions that make such injustices possible. On a more positive note, the book helped me release some remaining negative emotions around my dog Sawyer’s advancing age. I have done that before but hadn’t worked through everything. Even if there are still things left to release, I’m much closer to having released everything than I was before reading the book.
The Art of Racing in the Rain is a wonderful book for those who are ready for it. Due to the heavy subjects it covers and some things that may be triggering, I’d recommend making sure you’re in a fairly stable life situation before reading it. If you’re not in a good life situation, it may be too much for you or you may not get as much out of it as you otherwise could. That’s about all I can say without venturing into spoiler territory. I think everyone should read this book at some point, especially if they have had a pet or experienced a particularly trying time in life. If you’ve read it, please let me know your thoughts on it. Take care and I’ll see you in the next post.