Go do whatever, wherever. Go do it alone, and now, because you want to and you’re allowed to and you can.
What more reason would an octogenarian woman need to embark on an impulsive 2,000-mile hike from Saskatchewan to the Atlantic with scarcely any baggage? Ostensibly, Etta wants to see the ocean, yet she could make it to the Pacific in half the time. She could drive, take a train or bus or plane. Instead, she rambles through the wilderness in introspective silence and misty reminiscence. Solitude is her companion, that and a lone coyote with whom she converses on the brink of dementia. Meanwhile, her husband learns to occupy himself in her absence while their best friend tails her, only to embark on his own impromptu adventure once they meet up.
This road trip novel bears a striking resemblance to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (reviewed October 19, 2019), yet differs significantly in that Etta’s journey lacks a compelling reason. If one reaches the point in life where they have no obligations and dwindling faculties, it implies, they should embrace adventure while they still can. The idea appeals, but the execution leaves me skeptical. This ill-equipped and elderly pilgrim spends a summer sleeping under the stars, on the cold ground, and awakens limber enough each morning to go on? She never encounter dangerous animals or people, and the sun always shines? Through it all, the action flashes forward and backward through time without reason or warning, taxing not only the reader’s credulity but their patience.
Emma Hooper’s 2015 fiction is roughly based on the story of her grandparents’ courtship, as she discusses in this brief video . The story however, which I read on the misguided recommendation that it had anything in common with last week’s offering, A Year by the Sea, appeals in theory, but it taxed my credulity and patience.