Friday 22 June 2018

"The Great Alone" by Kristin Hannah

  The title for this book came from Robert Service's poem called "The Shooting of Dan McGrew":
"Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear?"
   The "Great Alone" is Alaska.  There is great description of Alaska in this novel!



  In 1974, Leni Allbright was a young teenager trying to fit in with her classmates.  She had moved many times because her father couldn't keep a job and was suffering from P.T.S.D. after being a POW in the Vietnam war.
  When her father inherited some property in Alaska, it seemed like an answer to the family's problems.  
  
Quote:
"They lived on a piece of land that couldn't be accessed by water at low tide, on a peninsula with only a handful of people and hundreds of wild animals, in a climate harsh enough to kill you.  There was no police station, no telephone service, no one to hear you scream".

  Yes, the wild animals are dangerous, and the weather is harsh, but the biggest danger turns out to be Leni's father.
Quote: "All this time, Dad had taught Leni how dangerous the outside world was.  The truth was that the biggest danger of all was in her own home."

  This is another time when I stand alone in evaluating literature. This novel has been given 4.35 stars from Goodreads and 4.6 stars from Amazon.  So..what do I know?
   I know that the first half pulled me in and the last half devastated me!  I read long into the night, but that was not a good thing.  The book does pull you in, but I felt that the ending was like a 'thriller', which we have already discovered I have no tolerance for.
  It was overly dramatic and seemed to romanticize abuse.  When I expected some resolution of the plot...... the plot exploded!
  Because I invest so much of myself in a novel, it is not the book for me. Abuse, abuse, and more abuse!
  Many parts did not seem realistic- especially the ending.

  Such wonderful descriptions of Alaskan life!  I love description, but not when it involves bruised and battered bodies, half-dead, and dead bodies. 
   I had such  expectations of plot development.  Greatly disappointed!

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