I liked The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. It was a good read, fast and engaging and moving and entertaining.  It made me cry.  I loved the ending.  But that said, to write a truly great book Garth Stein should have been more truthful.  About life and about bad luck and bad people, about how people with “best intentions” can mess you up, about how ruthless some people can be to get what they want, and how if ruthless people have power and money, they usually do get what they want. Stein could have been more truthful about the limits of law and the inadequacy of justice.  If he had presented the reality of the struggles faced in this book — untimely death, custody battles, accusations against character — he could have had his characters grow more, and change for better or for worse.  But this one time, I am saying it is enough to have a good story.  Because The Art of Racing In the Rain is a good book — it made me feel and it made me feel good — and that was good enough for me.

Stein’s characters were real people, even the dog narrator was a very real dog, doing doggie things but also having deep and insightful thoughts.  The thought processes of Enzo the dog made sense as being a dog’s straight forward, no-nonsense view of everyday actions around him: meals, sex, walks.  His viewpoint was not that of a cat (he was too eager) nor of a human, unless that human is silent and observant and reflective: how many humans do you know who are like that?

Enzo listens when Denny passes on words of racing wisdom and of course, we do too.  Some are good nuggets of truth, like that when racing, a driver must have no memory: “No memory of things he’d done just a second before.  Good or bad.  Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present.”  And when the race is over, then you go back and see what you did wrong.  Life presents us with many moments, important and not-so important, when looking backward is the wrong response, and when participating in the moment is all that matters.  As anyone knows who has ever lain awake in bed thinking over what would have been the better response when the milk spilled or the dinner burned up or the neighbor ran over your mailbox, there is always time to look backwards.  But the moment you have now is only the moment you havenow for that brief moment.  Be there for it.  Caveat:  sometimes the good stuff you remember makes a moment in time that much better, like seeing an old friend for the first time after years and as you see him, you also see all the great times you had and the seeing is even better.  Caveat to that caveat: in tennis, you must always play in the moment, and forget the good and the bad of the last points because all that matters is the point right now.  If you play tennis.

Another big rule of racing:  “That which you manifest is before you.”  You are master of your destiny.  Now that only goes so far.  Seeing yourself healthy cannot save you from cancer;  Enzo has trouble accepting that.  But both Enzo and Denny do understand that forcing a destiny is not the point, it is preparing yourself that matters, so that you’re ready and open for it when it offers itself.

Enzo’s big hope is to be reincarnated as a human.  Now I am not a believer in religious concepts of life after death and heavenly reward (I believe in Hell but only if I get to choose who goes there — which is evil in itself, so I guess I’ll go there) but I was intrigued by the idea of reincarnation as presented in this book: “Does a child know his own spiritual background, his own pedigree?….somewhere a child surprises himself with his endurance, his quick mind, his dexterous hands.  Somewhere a child accomplishes with ease that which usually takes great effort.  And this child, who has been blind to his past but whose heart still beats for the thrill of the race, this child’s soul awakens.”  The passing on of talents and desires and dreams through the recycling of souls: it could explain why each child is so unique within a family, each their own person and not like any other.  A combination of souls, the new and the recycled?  The balance of mass in the universe, nothing ever disappears, it just changes form.

That was just a thought, many of the thoughts that passed through my mind as I drank up this book, slurped it to the end, and then sat back, satisfied.