The Art of Racing in the Rain

Taken from my post at College Students: One of my best friends recommended this to me when it first came out, and I've seen it on people's “must read” lists for a while now. I was skeptical. I did not expect to like it as much as I did. But I really loved the book; I found Enzo's quips and statements to be concise and poignant without being trite or simplistic.

I read this book in one sitting, and I highly, highly recommend it. I was suspicious of the plot because I thought it sounded silly at first: racing? dogs? I don't like either of those things. I don't even really like cars at all. And I'm definitely a cat lady.

Multiple people recommended this book to me because they know I like books and dogs. This book is narrated by a dog, so it already starts off strong.

However, I found the dog, Enzo, to be pretty unbelievable in his lack of dogginess, and he also wasn't very sympathetic in his self-loathing – it's revealed pretty much off the bat that this dog wants to be a human in his next life, and he often laments the un-humanness of the body he's trapped in. He seems to spend his whole life with the background expectation that he should NOT be a dog, but a human, and looking down on typical dog behaviors, and I think that's too bad because I like those things.

Enzo also spends a lot of time dispensing platitudes and pearls of wisdom about racing - car-racing, not running in the rain, like you might think a dog would love. His great passion, for unpersuasively presented reasons, is being a spectator to others racing cars.

Also, sometimes I wondered if the author even ever had a dog. I just have never personally known a dog to like bananas or watching TV all day. And the author implies that neutered dogs can't get erections, which isn't true. There are some calculated acts of revenge that Enzo takes that are pretty feline.

Overall, the pacing and structure feel slightly amateurish, and the events are quite predictable. There are some nice and surprising turns of phrase in here, though, and overall it's a pretty nice story. They could probably make a good movie out of this and make tons of money.

Written from the perspective of a dog, this story follows a race car driver (though, more of his personal life than his career) through a family drama. Had I read this in 5th grade, I would have loved it; it has a dog as the main character and narrator, it has a love story, and tragedy, and triumph, and truisms. But alas, I read this as an adult and couldn't get past that it's incredibly cheesy (sometimes unbearably so – with full-on Harry Potter 7 level of cheesy epilogue), predictable, and frankly just not written all that well. Some sections were so non-nutritive (basically, anything to do with the actual racing of cars... or, when the dog imagines himself testifying at the stand as a witness in his owner's trial.... I mean, cmon) that I skimmed them.

Reading this book is like cruising along as a passenger in a race car. It's a fast and easy read and requires no special exertion from the reader. The best thing about it is that the dog is a narrator. The worst thing about it is how the author forgets this from time to time, or has to work at getting the dog into the scene to be able to describe to the reader what is happening. I would have definitely preferred a story without all the ends tied up, but more closely aligned with what Enzo, the pooch, might have seen/heard/thought.


I appreciated the last few pages- they made me smile in a way I was hoping to smile through the entire book.