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What Members Thought
I enjoyed the book, it was sweet & a little bit weird, but I was never engaged as much as I thought I would be. The premise is perfect: an 80-odd year old woman decides to walk thousands of miles to see the sea because she never has before, dementia threatens & she wants to do it before it takes her over. Unlike Otto, I can't see why Etta decided to walk 3200km east instead of 1200km west, but there you go. I don't really understand the addition of James the coyote but I am glad she had someone
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Feb 05, 2018
Book Concierge
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review of another edition
Shelves:
debut,
adventure,
historical-fiction,
concierge,
strong-women,
world-war-ii,
canada,
library,
magical-realism,
epistolary
Eighty-two-year-old Etta has never seen the sea, so she decides one day to leave her Saskatchewan farm and head out on foot. She leaves behind her husband, Otto, and their neighbor, Russell. Along the way she encounters James, and a host of other characters.
The novel is told in a series of letters, messages, and vignettes that move back and forth in time, eventually revealing Etta’s and Otto’s and Russell’s stories, from their childhoods through the war years and into adulthood. It reminded me ...more
The novel is told in a series of letters, messages, and vignettes that move back and forth in time, eventually revealing Etta’s and Otto’s and Russell’s stories, from their childhoods through the war years and into adulthood. It reminded me ...more
There was a moment about halfway through this book where I set down the book and said to myself, "I hate this freaking book." Really. This book is, I suppose, lyrical and creative and dreamy and all sorts of high literature. But it made me want to scream about half the time. It's not that I object to oblique story telling methods. On the Jellicoe Road was certainly not conventional narrative, and I absolutely love that. But this...this was sad. it felt resigned and hopeless, beaten down by life.
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Mar 08, 2017
Baroness Ekat
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review of another edition
Shelves:
2017-reading-challenge
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. I did it as an audio and I did like the narrator's voice. But I'm wondering if I might have liked this book better had I read it.
My problem was that it constantly flipped between the present and back to the 1940's and WWII, and at times I had trouble figuring out which time we were in when a new sub-chapter started.
Etta is 80 something, suffering from the beginning of Alzheimer's (though it never says the name directly) and has spent her whole l ...more
My problem was that it constantly flipped between the present and back to the 1940's and WWII, and at times I had trouble figuring out which time we were in when a new sub-chapter started.
Etta is 80 something, suffering from the beginning of Alzheimer's (though it never says the name directly) and has spent her whole l ...more
Sep 12, 2015
Marie (UK)
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review of another edition
Shelves:
2015-reading-challenge
this is said to be utterly moving and memorable. It was a pleasant read but not either of those things.
Jan 22, 2015
Linda
marked it as to-read
Jan 22, 2015
Liz O'Sullivan
marked it as to-read
Feb 12, 2015
Beth
marked it as to-read
Apr 12, 2015
Erica
marked it as to-read
Apr 21, 2015
Jocelyn
marked it as to-read
Jun 16, 2015
Kate
marked it as to-read
Oct 22, 2015
K
marked it as to-read
Feb 22, 2018
Cassie Bentley-Bradshaw
marked it as to-read
Jul 04, 2018
Karianne
marked it as to-read
Feb 06, 2019
Darcy
marked it as to-read
