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I’m finished, I’m finished at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m finished at last.
I can scarcely believe it’s true. Weeeeeeeks I have struggled with this book.
Here was my first problem: I bought it on a whim, slightly intoxicated, while on vacation in Florida at an utterly charming and whimsical bookshop called Sundog Books. The proprietor was friendly, even though it was nearing closing time. I felt encouraged to stay, to linger, to peruse. I chatted with a local, thinking we were going to form a long distance book club, only to find out she was drunker than me when pressed to tell me her media handle. She had no Goodreads or Facebook account. So that ain’t gonna work. Anyway, the book is beautiful, the cover persuading me. I hadn’t given full price ($28.95!!!!!!!!) for a book in years, so I felt due. I was on vacation!!! Seize the moment and all that. I had it in my head this was a book about the military of days gone by, so I looked on here and Amazon for a synopsis. And opinions. Because the one star reviews are always honest. But I must have somehow skimmed over them, because I paid for the book and it rode in the backseat the duration of our vacation and journey home.
It sat in my library, beautifully silver in tone, for months. I finally picked it up and began. Ugh.
The “protagonist”, I use that term because it’s the one everybody else has decided the main character, Josie, is. She’s depressing, jittery, and paranoid. She made ME want to run away. I had envisioned a beautiful rendering of Alaska, but it was only the descriptions of The Chateau that haunt me now. The rust, the smells, the overall appearance of a rattletrap decrepit RV.
If you don’t like the book by the first 50 pages, you aren’t going to. It doesn’t get any better, you don’t get any answers. You only get weighed down with endless questions.
But he threw me a bone every now and then, hence the two star rating. Here’s one: “Courage was the beginning, being unafraid, moving ahead, through small hardships, not turning back. Courage was simply a form of moving forward.”
There are minor terrible things that happen throughout, so regularly you begin to forget that there are happy books in the world. The desolation is complete, even in the creatures. “{the eagle} lifted off, its shoulders seeming tired, the movement of its wings far too slow and labored to create flight, but then it was up, rising like it was nothing, flight was nothing, the planet was nothing, nothing at all, just another place to leave.”

I am happy that I waited a bit before beginning, as that there is an element of fire that provides a bit of real drama to the novel. I understood the urgency of evacuation, of the real danger when the wind shifts, the description of the arid tang hovering around in the yellow air. Those are all accurate.
I did love the meeting of musicians in Cooper, when Josie becomes an impromptu composer. “These people didn’t know what they’d just done. What they were capable of. These GD musicians. They never knew their power.” Anyone who has ever been stirred by music knows this to be true.
“one by one the guests passed out as the best man, knowing his duty, kept the fire fed.” (I don’t know what that has to do with this review, but it conjured a lonely image in me, which is all. this. book. is. about).
This book is raw. It impresses me that he was able to write these small truths that we all struggle through. “You have a wonderful awkwardness.” Yes. Well.