いつか日本でも有名になる
★★★★★
犬が飼い主とその家族の様々なことを語る物語です。最初の1ページから最後の1ページまで読ませます。
飼い主に降りかかる様々な試練を目の当たりにして、犬であるがゆえに、大好きな飼い主にその思いを伝えられない歯がゆさがそのままこちらにも伝わってきます。
飛行機の機内で読んでいると、往復とも、本に気がついたアテンダントの方に
「その本はいいわよ。ティッシュ一箱必要ね」
「私は10冊買って友人に配った」
と言われて正直驚きました。
が、実際読み終わって深い感動を味わい、久しぶりに人に薦めたい本に出合えたと思いました。
アメリカ人女性に貸したところ、姉のために自分も一冊買ったそうです。
そしてこの本はアメリカ人(作者がアメリカ人なので)よりもさらにもっと日本人に受けるタイプの本だと思います。
いつか「アルジャーノン・・」のように日本でも有名になるでしょう。
An unforgettable story of struggle and triumph
★★★★★
Every so often I come across a book that is so compelling that it pulls me in such a way that I am part of the story, even when the subject of the story auto racing is a subject that know nothing about and am not in the slightest way interested in. Had novelist Kathleen McKenna (The Wedding Gift) not practically demanded that I read it, I would probably have passed it up. I’m glad I took her advice. The Art of Racing in the Rain has become one of my all time favorite books.
Simply put, The Art of Racing in the Rain is about Denny, his wife Eve, their little daughter Zo, Eve’s wealthy parents Maxwell and Trish, and Denny’s dog Enzo who narrates the story. But it’s much, much more than that. It’s about a man’s struggle to become what he’s always dreamt of being, a Formula One racecar driver. It’s about falling in love, marrying and seeing your first child born. It’s about sickness and watching your wife die from brain cancer. And it’s about struggling to overcome resentment and defeat as her death threatens to tear your family apart, to crush you and steal your lifelong dream.
Ultimately it’s also about much more than that. It’s about triumphing in the face of an implacable enemy who is dead set on destroying you to get his way. In that sense, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a parable of all struggles for justice and the triumph of morality over selfishness and greed. And it is a parable of the triumph of a man’s dream, and of forgiveness.
“There is no dishonor in losing the race,” a friend says; “There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid.”
If you haven’t yet read The Art of Racing in the Rain, go out, buy yourself a copy, sit down and begin an adventure that you will never forget.