The Art of Racing In the Rain Book Review

The Art of Racing In the Rain, by Garth Stein, is a fiction novel about a man named Denny Swift and his dog Enzo’s journey focusing on the chasing of one’s dream. Denny is a race car driver at heart and spends his free time studying film and racing. His dog Enzo narrates the story and guides the reader through the novel. Denny and his wife Eve have a daughter named Zoe and live together as a happy family until Eve becomes sick. A series of events takes place that turns Denny’s life upside down and forces him to fight for the custody of his daughter from Eve’s parents. Through the perseverance of Denny and the endless amounts of support and love from Enzo, Denny battles to get his daughter back and achieve his dream of becoming a famous driver. Will Denny’s live be left in shambles, or will he rise to the occasion and turn his life into his longing dream?

A major key to this novel and an important reason that the novel is so good is because of Enzo, Denny’s dog. Enzo has a great personality and talks about a variety of things like how he believes he will come back as a human in his afterlife, his dislike for monkeys because they have thumbs, how he loves to watch TV and learn from the shows, and so much more. Enzo’s personality captures the heart of every reader and makes the reader want to keep reading. This is extremely important and makes the book stand out because it forces the reader to not put down the book. The reader will grow attached to the character and emphasize with him and this is so important to a good book and leaves the audience in love with Enzo. Enzo also helps Denny throughout the book and coerces him to make decisions that will benefit his life. If Enzo would not have initiated these occurrences, then Denny’s life could have ended completely different. For example, towards the end of the novel, Denny is deciding to whether or not he should settle while he is in legal trouble. Enzo notices that if Denny signs the document, his life will not be heading in a good direction and Denny will always regret it. So to make influence Denny and change his mind, Enzo improvises. He says, “And then next thing I knew I was standing at the door with the papers in my mouth.”(Stein 265). He continues to say that he takes the papers and runs away from Denny and then urinates on them. This really saves Denny from handing over his daughter to Eve’s parents and giving his rights away. This makes the novel so great because it is very interesting and exciting that a dog can influence the main character to make so many important decisions to change the outcome of the story.

A big theme in the the novel is perseverance and to never give up. Multiple characters in the book face many different forms of adversity and through the efforts to not give up they can overcome it. Three main characters that overcome adversity is Enzo, Eve, and Denny. Enzo who is a very old dog is hit by a car, and although he could easily give up and let go of his life, he continues to fight for Denny and Zoe’s sake. Eve is diagnosed with a terminal illness and is given only months to live. Although at first Eve is very depressed and can’t cope with her illness, other characters such as Denny, Zoe, and Enzo motivate her to be strong and to keep fighting, and even though it is for a short time period, Eve makes it past her time table given by the doctor to live. Finally Denny overcomes the greatest adversity of all of the characters. He faces a felony charge, going broke, losing his wife, and having his daughter taken from him all at once. Denny could have given up and let the Twins take Zoe from him and could have just let his life fall apart but through his determination and will to never give up, along with the help of Enzo, Denny overcomes the odds and gains custody to his daughter and gets to live his dream. These themes for the reader are very positive and make this novel because it encourages the readers to never give up on somebody or on yourself when in a tough situation, because anything is possible when you set your mind to it and you don’t know what could happen.

After reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, I believed that there could not be a book to match it because I enjoyed it so much. When I first heard this book was about a dog I thought that in a way the book would be soft and not enjoyable for me but I turned out to be very wrong. This book has been one of the best books that I have read in my high school career and the best of this class. The book was never boring and always had me wanting to read more than what was assigned. I cannot wait to read the next book because so far it has been a positive trend, and after this novel, I don’t think anything can beat it.