The Art of Racing in the Rain Review

         Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain is about a very intelligent dog named Enzo and his owner, Denny, who is an up and coming race car driver. From Enzo’s perspective, the novel starts with Enzo late in life, talking about his relationship with Denny and how he feels about his doghood. Then, Enzo starts telling the story of his life from when Denny adopts him. The novel really picks up when Denny meets and marries Eve and they have a daughter, Zoё. Enzo’s narration highlights his relationship with the humans around him and how he works around the limitations of being a dog, as well as how he views real world problems the humans experience, like money and legal troubles, and evil in-laws.

My biggest critique of the book is with the language Stein uses to describe things. From time to time it is very raw and makes me uncomfortable. This problem is mostly towards the beginning of the novel, when Enzo describes things like his mother feeding him and Denny and Eve having sex, “...yanking at hair, all elbows and toes and saliva. They fell onto the bed and he mounted her and she said, ‘The field is fertile-beware!’”(Stein 16), these kinds of descriptions were unnecessary and didn't add any extra value that couldn’t have been accomplished in a less gross way. Aside from the few instances of this grossness, however, the language is actually very nice and it adds to the character of Enzo, showing his intelligence and curiosity through his descriptions and how he relates different things he has seen to each other.

Stein handled a dog narrator very well. I’ve seen from other works that when writing animal protagonists, they can seem too human or too animal, but neither is a problem for me in this book. Enzo constantly says he feels human, like being a human is what he was made for, when I first read those parts, I thought Stein would use it as an excuse to make Enzo way too human for the book to be realistic, but he didn’t, the humanness comes off as just a fantasy that Enzo has for himself. “...I couldn’t be a human anymore and feel the pain that humans feel. I had to be an animal again.”(165) Enzo has very animalistic moments, ones that make him question his alleged humanness and that he is embarrassed of, which makes sense for an intelligent, humanity obsessed dog. Stein also has the characters treat Enzo realistically, he isn’t allowed to go everywhere, but people also don’t bother to hide things from him, which makes the information that he shares in his narration very interesting. 

In summary, I really liked this book, it has a very engaging story, likable characters, and very cute relationships that make the book largely enjoyable. It is chock full of racing advice and lessons that become very useful outside of racing as they become life advice for the characters. Furthermore, despite its few flaws, it is still written nicely, the language is clear and shows off Enzo's interests and personality, it is also full of references that a lot of people would appreciate. It is an uplifting book about a family overcoming their struggles and more people should read it. However, it isn’t the most exciting story, and thus it probably isn’t for everyone. Specifically, I’d recommend it to people who like family stories, and especially those with dogs.