On Hitler's Mountain, by Irmgard A. Hunt

On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood, by Irmgard A. Hunt.  Harper Perennial, 2005.  278 pp.  978-0-06-053218-5.

… in which the author describes her life in Berchtesgaden, Germany, during the years of Hitler’s regime.

When it comes to memoirs relating to WWII history, the selection seems to be largely dominated by Holocaust survivors or by writing from the Pacific side of the war.  For me, at least, it was easy to forget about the general population of Germany, since most of the attention goes to the Nazis or to the people who suffered under them.  Irmgard Hunt, the author of this memoir, was born in 1934, the year after Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.  She was born in Berchtesgaden, a town in southeastern Germany that is infamous as being Hitler's home and his base of operations.  Irmgard was born to parents who had both suffered greatly in the difficult years following WWI.  Because of their difficulties in their youth, Irmgard's parents were both easily persuaded to vote for Hitler in 1933, and to support him in the following years.  Because of her proximity to Hitler's home, Irmgard was always aware of Hitler's presence; once, when she was a small child, she even sat on his knee when he spotted her at a parade.  As Germany eventually found itself at war with the Allies, Irmgard's happy early childhood changed.  Her father was called away to war, and was killed in France.  Irmgard goes on to describe what it was like being an everyday German during the war, during the years of rationing and air raids and increasing Nazi brutality directed at Irmgard's family and friends.

The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester.  HarperPerennial, 1998.  242 pp.  978-0-06-083978-9.

… in which we learn about how the Oxford English Dictionary was created with the help of an Oxford professor and an inmate in an asylum for the criminally insane.

At first glance, this is simply the story of the writing of the English language’s most important reference book: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).  However, in the hands of Simon Winchester, this seemingly dull story takes on a great deal of heart and life.  The OED spans twelve volumes, defines 414,825 words, and contains 178 miles of text.  As a point of comparison, the average fluent English speaker knows about 20,000 words. 

From its inception to the completion of the first edition of the OED, 70 years elapsed, and in those seven decades a group of dedicated scholars ponderously worked their way through all the words in the English language.  Their strategy was simple: read books, and write down every word they read.  Since this is obviously a gargantuan task, they enlisted the help of interested volunteers in English-speaking countries around the world.  In charge of the project was Professor James Murray, a man of humble origins who had attained his place at Oxford University through self-education (he never formally completed grammar school).  Over time, he found that over ten thousand of the OED’s definitions were submitted by a single volunteer: one Dr. William Chester Minor, who apparently lived a mere forty miles from Oxford.  Professor Murray took it upon himself to visit this prolific contributor to the dictionary, only to find that Dr. Minor was an American Civil War veteran who had murdered a man in London and was then found to be insane and was locked away for life in an insane asylum.  What followed from this shocking discovery was a friendship and an extremely productive partnership that would last for the remainder of their lives.

Lonely Werewolf Girl, by Martin Millar

Lonely Werewolf Girl, by Martin Millar.  Soft Skull Press, 2007.  560 pp.  978-0-9796636-6-6.

… in which Kalix the werewolf girl finds herself at the center of a civil war among the werewolves of Scotland.

Lonely Werewolf Girl is the story of a clan of werewolves in Scotland and England.  The Thane, leader of the werewolf clan, has died, and there is now a war of succession taking place.  At the center of the conflict is 17 year old Kalix, the daughter and youngest child of the Thane and the cause of his death.  Banished from the ancestral family home in Scotland, Kalix now wanders the streets of London, fighting her crippling depression, drug addiction, and the people who want her dead.  Also central to the story are Kalix’s brothers, Sarapen and Markus, who are fighting each other for the leadership of the clan.  Kalix’s sister, Thrix, and various cousins all choose to stand with either Sarapen or Markus, but when it becomes clear that Kalix is the key to victory in the civil war, the battle start coming to London.

Hush, Hush, by Becca Fitzpatrick

Hush, Hush, by Becca Fitzpatrick.  Simon and Schuster, 2009.  400 pp.  978-1416989417.

... in which we have Twilight, but with angels instead of vampires.

The story in Hush, Hush revolves around Nora, a high school sophomore.  One day in biology, the seating arrangement gets changed and Nora ends up with a new biology partner.  The partner, a mysterious bad-boy named Patch, seems to know exactly how to get under Nora's skin and drive her crazy.  He also knows way too many details about her life.  After meeting Patch for the first time, Nora begins to run into him all over town, suggesting that he may be following her.  She also survives several near-death experiences, and begins to suspect that someone is trying to kill her.  When she does a little research into Patch and some of the other unusual people she's met since meeting him, she finds out that Patch is a fallen angel... an angel who fell to earth and lost their wings.  Despite all of the evidence suggesting that Patch is dangerous, Nora finds herself inexplicably attracted to him.  Nora ends up in a conflict between fallen angels and the Nephilim (offspring of humans and fallen angels), which could have life-threatening consequences for her.

Dead Reckoning, by Charlaine Harris

Dead Reckoning, by Charlaine Harris.  Ace Books, 2011.  325 pp.  978-0-441-02031-7.

...in which Sookie witnesses a bombing, gets pulled into vampire politics, and acquires an interesting fairy artifact.

Dead Reckoning, the most recent installment in Charlaine Harris' enormously popular Sookie Stackhouse series, is an improvement on the last few books in the series, but doesn't quite measure up to the earlier books.  The book opens with Sookie working her shift at Merlotte's bar, which is firebombed by a mysterious individual.  Sookie suspects that someone supernatural is behind the attack.  Meanwhile, at home, Sookie is working on cleaning out the attic of her 150 year old house, with the help of her two fairy cousins/roommates.  While cleaning out an old desk, Sookie finds a mysterious object that was given to her grandmother by her grandfather.  As Sookie digs deeper into the mysteries surrounding her fairy ancestry, she also has to fend off attacks on her life and cope with her secretive, distracted boyfriend, Eric, who's being pulled into a nasty political affair amongst the vampires.

The Hidden Goddess, by M.K. Hobson

The Hidden Goddess, by M.K. Hobson.  Ballantine Books, 2011.  374 pp.  978-0-553-59266-5.

... in which Emily and Dreadnought continue their adventures by battling high society, Russians, and vengeful Aztec goddesses.

The Hidden Goddess continues the story that was started in The Native Star.  Picking up only a few weeks after the first book left off, we start the story by getting an idea of how much Emily and Dreadnought's lives have changed since the events in The Native Star.  Emily is trying to make the transition from rural small town witch to the world of high-society New York City ladies.  Her fiance, Dreadnought Stanton, is being groomed to take over the leadership of one of the most influential magical institutes in the world.  Unfortunately for the two of them, several mysterious rival factions have plans of their own.  A group of fanatics in South America are preparing to resurrect an Aztec goddess, and a group of fanatics from Russia are trying to prevent the goddess's resurrection by putting a stop to all magic.  Caught in the middle, and constrained by the rules of New York's elite socialites, Emily has to find a way to prevent both the Aztecs and the Russians from succeeding in their plans, but she also has to find a way to help Dreadnought keep his new institute from falling to pieces.

The Native Star, by M.K. Hobson

The Native Star, by M.K. Hobson.  Ballantine Books, 2010.  387 pp.  978-0-553-59265-8.

... in which a small town witch gets caught up with warlocks, dark magic, zombies and a mysterious artifact.

The Native Star is set in an alternate history of post-Civil War America (1876, to be exact).  Ulysses S. Grant is president.  The country is still recovering from the war, which was partially won through use of magic.  The tides of industry and progress are starting to sweep across the country, and the changes are being felt in a small mining town in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  The town witch, Emily Edwards, finds that she is going out of business because people are increasingly turning to factory produced charms and potions and spells, instead of coming to her.  Emily makes the decision to cast a love spell on the most eligible bachelor in town, hoping that he'll marry her and her money woes will be over.  The spell backfires, but before Emily can fix it, she gets swept up in a zombie battle that results in her acquiring a rare, powerful artifact that hinders her ability to do magic.  Finding that more powerful forces will do anything to get the artifact, Emily is forced to flee her home.  Dreadnought Stanton (a deliberately pompous name) is a warlock visiting from New York City, and he agrees to accompany her to San Francisco, where magical scholars will hopefully be able to unlock the mystery of the artifact, called the Native Star.  Unfortunately, things do not go as planned, and Emily and Dreadnought are forced to flee across the country to New York.

Bone Hunter, by Sarah Andrews

Bone Hunter, by Sarah Andrews.  St. Martin's Press, 1999.  353 pp.  0-312-97317-9.

... in which a forensic geologist tracks down the murderer of a famous paleontologist.

This poor little battered up paperback has been following me around the United States since the summer of 2007, when I picked it up in a little bookshop in Jackson, Wyoming.  It then traveled with me to Montana, Idaho, back to Wyoming, back to Idaho, Missouri, back to Idaho again, and then Ohio.  Only now did I get around to reading it, and now I kind of see why I was putting it off, despite my natural affinity for geologists named Emily.

The premise is interesting... a geologist Emily Hansen has earned a reputation for using her geological knowledge to help detectives crack their murder cases.  Bone Hunter is from somewhere in the middle of the Em Hansen mystery series, but I did not find that previous knowledge of the series was necessary.  The story opens with Em arriving in Salt Lake City to attend a paleontology conference.  She's staying with a famous paleontologist, the sort of guy you see in documentaries on National Geographic.  Unfortunately for her, her host ends up dead in the Utah desert, and Em is the prime suspect.  To clear her name, Em teams up with a local cop and starts digging into the murder victim's secrets and questioning his colleagues.

As far as murder mystery protagonists go, Em Hansen is pretty unique.  She's not a cop or an FBI agent, and she doesn't have a special animal sidekick... all she has is a good understanding of stratigraphy and sedimentology.  The rest of the characters, however, are pretty by-the-book.

The plot of the book was pretty bland... it might be because Em was a suspect in the murder case, but she seemed to do a lot of following the cop around and reacting to what she learned from him, as opposed to much active investigation of her own.  She also doesn't get many opportunities to actually exercise her knowledge of geology, but that is probably also due to the fact that she's a suspect, not an independent consultant brought in to help on the case.  So, most of the book revolves around her chatting with the paleontologists at the conference, and finding out that the murder victim was involved with some Fundamentalist Mormons who lived deep in the desert.  The ending of the book is fairly action-packed, which makes up for the slower pace of the rest of the novel, but unfortunately the killer ends up being the most obvious person.  Never a good thing in a mystery.

I feel like this book was on the edge of being something really good... but ended up falling a little short.  From researching the series online, I gather that this book is actually something of a transition novel, since it introduces one character who becomes important later in the series.  In the end, I'd be willing to read other books from the series, not because of the strength of Bone Hunter, but because of the hint of what kind of book it could have been.

3/5 stars.

The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss

The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss.  Daw Books, 2011.  994 pp.  978-0-7564-0473-4.

... in which Kvothe, tragic legendary hero extraordinaire, continues his story of magic, death, betrayal, love, and music.

The Wise Man's Fear is the sequel to The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, and continues through day two of the story that Kvothe is relating to the Chronicler.  The past/present storytelling structure is continued in this book, with Kvothe, pretending to be Kote the innkeeper, telling the story of his life to the Chronicler.  There is much less content covering the present storyline in this book, which is almost entirely based in Kvothe's past.  This book takes a welcome break from the University setting, and lets Kvothe explore new surroundings.  He travels from the University to serve a powerful man thousands of miles away.  While in this man's service, Kvothe fights bandits, survives a battle of wills with a deadly member of the Fae, and travels to a far corner of the world to learn the fighting arts from a nation of mercenaries.

The sequel shares many of the first book's strengths.  Rothfuss' lyrical, detailed writing has improved even more, becoming less cliched.  Although the book is just under a thousand pages, the writing also feels tighter.  The characterization, a strong point of the first book, is even stronger in this installment.  Kvothe, who could be annoyingly adolescent in the first book, grows up a bit in the second book.  He still knows that he's extraordinary, but he is less arrogant and less prone to flaunting his awesomeness to the world.  In the first book, he seemed to be the typical talented hero, who could pick up any skill in a flash.  In this book, when he travels to Ademre to learn how to fight like the Adem mercenaries, he frequently gets beaten up by a nine-year-old girl.  When he finally leaves the Adem, his fighting skills are better than the skills of most people in the world, but still far inferior to the skills of the Adem.  It was refreshing to find something that Kvothe couldn't pick up in a flash.

One of the things that I really enjoy about this series is that while it follows the traditional structure of a normal epic fantasy series, it deviates from standard fantasy in a lot of aspects.  For example, Kvothe doesn't learn to become a warrior until two thirds of the way through the second book.  Traditionally, this is something that occurs in the very beginning of the first book.  And as explained earlier, when Kvothe does learn to fight, it turns out that he's only passably good at it.  The romantic aspect is really muted, as Kvothe's love interest is easily scared away and because Kvothe, at 17, doesn't really have any idea of how to woo a woman.  At no point does the book start to take on a quest feeling... as the story of Kvothe's life, there isn't really a clear beginning and end to a particular "quest"... everything that happens is just another part of the larger story.  Finally, I really like that there is one storyline and one storyline only, told in first-person perspective by the main character.  Instead of having a multi-faceted story that follows multiple characters on their own journey, we can instead have one story that follows one character in a richly detailed and intricate account of his life, with both the boring and the exciting aspects.  Far from making this a simpler story compared to other fantasy epics, we instead get depth in one character's story, as opposed to breadth in many characters' stories. 

The biggest weakness of The Name of the Wind may have been its slow pacing.  While the pacing doesn't pick up that much in the second book, the change in settings goes a long way to moving the plot along.  We also meet a lot of new characters, and see a lot of new cultures, including Kvothe's first foray into the faerie realm.  Despite the faster pacing, The Wise Man's Fear still only covers a year, maybe a little more, of Kvothe's life.  The Name of the Wind covered Kvothe's childhood up until he was about 16.  It will be interesting to see how Rothfuss will manage to cover the years from Kvothe, the 18-year-old University student, to Kote, the 30ish-year-old innkeeper waiting to die in the middle of nowhere.  That's a lot of material to cover, considering the slow pacing and the fact that Rothfuss has declared that this will be a trilogy, and considering the number of events that are implied in the "present" storyline that have yet to be covered in the "past" storyline.  However, a great deal of foreshadowing occurs throughout the book, indicating that the story will only get darker.

Since the pacing issue from the first book was improved in the second, I think my biggest complaint about this book is that it very much feels like the middle book in a trilogy.  To be fair, I have yet to read a trilogy where the middle book doesn't feel like a middle book.  In this case, we don't have the bright-eyed, young character getting introduced to the world, like we would in a first book, and we don't have the hero conquering all odds like we would have in the final book of a trilogy.  Instead, we have further character development and a lot of events that are clearly leading to some kind of epic-ness that will become clear in the final installment. 

Highly recommended reading for fans of fantasy of epic scope and epic length... and epic waits between books.

5/5 stars

Terra Incognita, by Sara Wheeler

Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, by Sara Wheeler.  Random House, 1996.  351 pp.  0-679-44078-X.

... in which a travel writer spends seven months living and working in Antarctica.

This is the first of a pile of books that I have to read, all centered around the Arctic and Antarctic.  For Terra Incognita, Sara Wheeler, a British travel writer and biographer, got a grant to spend a summer in Antarctica as part of a writers' program.  She spends about six months in Antarctica through the Antarctic summer (approximately October through March), and then returned to spend an additional month (August) there at the tail end of the Antarctica winter.  While she is there, she spend her time moving between various bases and field camps, traveling with different kinds of scientists, and generally absorbing the culture associated with the most desolate continent on Earth.

The interesting thing about Antarctica is that it does not belong to one single nation, and is the only place on Earth that is totally devoted to science and learning.  The Antarctic Treaty, first established in 1961, establishes everything south of 60 degrees S as a scientific preserve, owned by no nations and belonging to all.  Multiple countries have their own established research bases, at various points on the Antarctic continent, with the largest base being McMurdo Station, operated by the USA.  Wheeler makes McMurdo her first stop, and for most of her time in Antarctica, it serves as her base station.  From here, she leaves on smaller excursions to go with scientists to study penguins, ice chemistry, ice physics, Antarctic geology, astronomy, weather, climate and atmosphere, fish, bacteria... you name it.  Throughout her journey, she not only describes the science taking place, but also the scientists, the support staff, and the culture at each location.  She also discusses the history of Antarctic exploration, including famous explorers like Captain Cook, Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton, and the British hero Robert Falcon Scott.

The book is separated into three sections, each detailing a part of her journey.  The first part, The Antarctic Continent, covers the period of time when she was based at McMurdo, which is on the side of Antarctica closest to New Zealand.  In this part of the book, Wheeler is welcomed with open arms and visits more research sites and meets more people than at any other point in the book.

The second part covers her time on the Antarctic Peninsula.  For those unfamiliar with south pole geography, the Antarctic Peninsula is closer to South America.  To get from McMurdo to the peninsula, it was necessary for Wheeler to fly from McMurdo, Antarctic to New Zealand, and then to London, and then to the Falkland Islands (off the southern tip of South America) and then back to Antarctica, this time on the peninsula side.  Interestingly, the culture on this part of the continent is strikingly different; very much a boys' club, she finds herself being something of an outcast among the men who resent her presence.

The final part of the book covers her return to Antarctica during the southern hemisphere winter, in August.  Arriving at the end of winter, Wheeler meets a woman who is there to paint watercolors of the sea ice and the glaciers.  The two of them establish their own small research camp, about twelve miles from McMurdo, devoted to the arts, rather than the sciences.

I really enjoyed reading this book.  Travel writing can sometimes be hard to wade through, if the author is not sufficiently engaging.  Luckily, Wheeler does a great job filling the book with her interesting observations and her sly sense of humor.  She blends her experiences with the historical parts of the book well, so that we get historical context for each location that she visits.  She also does a good job describing the people and activities in Antarctica, describing how people live and the experiments that go on there.

The book could have benefited from a few pages of pictures.  I would have liked to have seen some photos of what the camps and bases look like, and I certainly enjoy photos of penguins and glaciers!  The book also could have really benefited from the inclusion of some larger maps, maybe a pull-out.  The maps that are included in the book are small and require a lot of flipping back and forth if you want to consult them.  My final complaint is that I would have liked to have seen even more historical background... I really enjoyed reading about the old expeditions to Antarctica.

Recommended reading for people who enjoy travel writing, or who have an interest in life at the poles.

4/5 stars

Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier

Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier.  Penguin Books, 2009.  312 pp.  978-0-452-29672-5.

... in which two women in 19th century England hunt for fossils and change the course of paleontology as a science.

Remarkable Creatures is the fictionalized account of the lives and friendship of two real women, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, who lived in Lyme Regis, a small town on the southern coast of England.  The story begins when Elizabeth Philpot moves to Lyme with her two sisters.  The Philpot sisters are members of the respectable upper class of English society, but when it became clear that all three sisters were destined for spinsterhood, their brother sent them from London to live modestly in a cottage in Lyme.  Upon arriving in Lyme, Elizabeth discovers a fondness for walking along the beach and finding fossils hidden in the cliffs exposed by the ocean.  Mary Anning, the daughter of a cabinetmaker in Lyme, soon begins to accompany Elizabeth on her fossil-hunting walks.  Although twenty years younger than Elizabeth, Mary soon proves to be a more talented fossil hunter and eventually Mary and Elizabeth form an unlikely friendship, despite being separated by England's rigid social strata.  The story follows Mary and Elizabeth through decades of friendship, as their discoveries of fossilized dinosaurs and marine reptiles begin to make their way to museums and are studies by the greatest scientists of the day.

This novel is certainly not an action-packed story.  Instead, the primary focus is on the unlikely friendship between the two women, and their continuous battle against the restraints imposed on them by their rigid society.  As a reference point, Elizabeth Philpot is a contemporary of Jane Austen, so all of the rules that applied in Austen's work are also present here.  The story alternates between Elizabeth's perspective and Mary's perspective, offering us glimpses into their lives in the respectable upper class and in the working class, respectively. 

Probably the most fascinating part of this book is the novelized glimpse it gives us into events which turn out to be historically significant.  When Elizabeth and Mary were finding their fantastic fossils of plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, the scientific and religious communities of Europe were first beginning to address issues like extinction, age of the earth, and geologic change.  Scientists were tentatively suggesting that the earth was not created in seven days, and that at some point in the earth's history, animals had lived and gone extinct.  These ideas were challenged by the more literal-minded members of society, who insisted that the earth was 10,000 years old and that the concept of extinction challenged the supposition that God's creation was perfect and unchanging.  Mary Anning, considered to be one of the most significant women in the history of science, contributed greatly to this debate with her discovery of her fossils, and Elizabeth Philpot taught Mary about all of the ideas being presented by the great minds of geology.  Unfortunately, neither woman received much recognition for their contributions, though Mary Anning did achieve some fame for being a good specimen hunter.

The book is also peppered with appearances by some of the most significant scientists in modern times.  William Buckland, a prominent geologist who spent his life trying to bridge the gap between geologic evidence and Biblical literalism, is an important character in Mary and Elizabeth's lives, and is one of the first to publicly recognize Mary's contributions.  Georges Cuvier, the famous anatomist, makes a brief appearance.  At the end of the novel, a young Charles Lyell even drops by to pay a visit to Mary.  For those of you not well versed in the history of science, Charles Lyell is to geology as Isaac Newton is to physics.  Charles Lyell would go on to write his famous Principles of Geology, which went on to inspire ideas in people like Charles Darwin.  I wish I had read this book when I was a junior in college writing a term paper on the role of religion and geology in the 1800s!

But I digress.  The strength of this book is in the voice it gives to two extraordinary women who have been passed over by history.  As a fictionalized account of real events, I know the author had to have taken some artistic liberties, but nevertheless we are presented with two fully realized, three dimensional characters who defy the standards of their time to make their mark on the world.  My only complaint is that I wish the book had been longer, because the ending feels a bit rushed and crammed and story ends decades before either Mary or Elizabeth pass away.

Recommended reading for anyone with an interest in historical fiction, fossils and paleontology, or geology.
5/5 stars

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein.  HarperCollins, 2008.  321 pp.  978-0-06-153796-7.

... in which Enzo the dog tells us the story of his life with his human.

I didn't intend to read this book at this particular moment in time.  It was in my pile of books to be read, which I was reorganizing last night.  As I was sorting through the books, I picked this one up and realized that I didn't really know what it was about, except that it involved a dog.  So, I decided to just read the first page or two.  A few hours later, I looked up and realized that I was at the end of the book.  Oops.

The Art of Racing in the Rain is told from the perspective of Enzo, a lab-terrier mix.  It's not a cheap gimmick... there are no clever conversations between animals, and no dogs talking directly to humans.  Instead, it's told through Enzo's observations of his master's life.

The book opens at the end of Enzo's life, as he reflects on the events that have consumed the past few years.  As an old dog in failing health, Enzo is ready to move on.  He once saw a documentary about Mongolia, and he learned that Mongolians believe that a dog who is prepared will be reborn as a human.  Enzo is ready to be a human.

Enzo and his human, Denny, share a very special bond; Enzo is one of the most important things in Denny's life.  Enzo watches as Denny, an aspiring race car driver, falls in love with a woman, Eve.  Denny eventually marries Eve, and they have a child, Zoe, who Enzo swears to protect forever.  When Zoe is still a toddler, Enzo begins to smell something foul and dark growing in Eve's head; it turns out to be a brain tumor, and Eve's illness and death trigger a nasty custody battle between Denny and Eve's parents for custody of Zoe.  In the subsequent pages, as Denny faces greater and greater challenges and descends into despair, Enzo is his only friend.

One of the things I liked most about this book was the fact that the story is told simply and in a straight-forward fashion, making it a fast read.  Enzo makes an insightful storyteller, partially because as a dog, he acts as an unofficial confessor to most of the characters in the book.  As a dog, he also can read human emotions with a clarity that humans sometimes lack.  Through Enzo's loving eyes, Denny is fleshed out as a three-dimensional character, deeply in love with his wife, devoted to his child, and not without his own flaws.  It takes awhile for Enzo to warm up to Eve, but when he finally begins to connect with her, Eve also becomes a nicely filled out character.  Enzo himself is a fully realized character as well.  His human emotions with his dog instincts and observations make him something more than human.

Probably the most difficult part of reading this book is the hatefulness of Eve's parents.  It could be because we're seeing them through Enzo's eyes, and Enzo hates them, but at times they are so awful that it makes reading about them almost physically unpleasant.  It's hard to muster up any sympathy for them, which is hard since the other important characters are fleshed out so well, but I'm choosing to attribute this to Enzo's all-encompassing devotion to his master, as opposed to any shortcoming on the author's part.  My only other complaint is that one of the central complications that Denny encounters in the story seems a little contrived.  The timing of a particular lawsuit comes across as a little too convenient, but perhaps some of the confusion here is because as a dog, Enzo isn't exactly allowed into the courthouse for the various hearings and so all of his information about the trials is secondhand.

Despite a middle that is full of sadness and despair, The Art of Racing in the Rain has a happy ending.  It's a moving testament to the importance of the bond between human and animal, and the importance of hope in a hopeless situation.  Yes, it is likely to make a lot of readers cry, but not in a bad way.

5/5 stars