Summer's 'Most Enchanting Debut Novel'

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, the debut novel from former software developer David Wroblewski, is “a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana," Janet Maslin raves in the New York Times. "Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down," she says of a coming-of-age story involving a deaf boy and the dogs his family breeds.

"Everything fades away as we're drawn into this engrossing tale," Ron Charles writes in the Washington Post of Wroblewski's work, inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet and also borrowing from the likes of Stephen King. Wroblewski interestz the reader in small, moving details, Maslin says: His writing "is so natural and unfettered, so free of metaphor or other baggage, that even the simplest moments can have extraordinary grace.” (More book reviews stories.)