(4.3 / 5)
Kristin Hannah really had her work cut out for her after she wrote The Nightingale. This beautiful book follows her wild success nicely and I’m betting her followers won’t be disappointed. And while The Great Alone wasn’t quite as perfect as The Nightingale I didn’t mind. I still feel this will be one of the more memorable reads from 2018 (pretty soon to be calling it I know, but you guys this was good!).
Let’s talk about the good stuff, there really is so much to mention. First, the backdrop, the Alaskan wilderness was nothing sort of magical. Hannah really outdid herself in painting the perfect picture of Alaska in all it’s savage glory. Add to that the people who make up the small community and she just doesn’t miss. This element alone would make the book worth reading, luckily there is so much else to recommend it. Hannah builds fantastic tension for the reader. I felt the fear, joy, frustration, and hopelessness of our protagonists and this compelling feature kept me up late more than once. Finally, Ernst feels too complicated to be called a villain, and I’m grappling for an alternative term, but he was so believable and well done and even though I read his parts with trepidation I can’t deny how dynamic he was. He was truly horrifying and heartbreaking and Hannah colored him perfectly, illustrating the pitfalls of battling an invisible opponent (in this case, the psychological effects of war). I hated him, but I understood him.
I have a few minor criticisms that should be noted, but definitely not turn you away from this book. First, Leni was a wonderful protagonist, intelligent, capable, compassionate, strong, but for all her talents she still felt distant to me. I think it has to do with the last quarter of the book being so rushed and different from the first ¾ but I wish I could have ended strong with her. On that note the last part of this book just didn’t jive with the rest, I understand completely why Hannah did what she did and why it took so long to wrap everything up in a believable way, but some things that happen at the end seemed superfluous and I felt myself running out of steam. Luckily she held on to some key parts of the story to keep the reader interested enough to power through the weak sections. One more thing about Leni is her isolation and loneliness is such a big part of her story and identity, yet I never really felt that loneliness. The author tells us her loneliness happens, but it feels like it took place off page because I was constantly reading about her interactions with her parents or the people in the town. I think the ending would have been more powerful for me had her loneliness been more present. Lastly, conversations between Leni and her mom after the abusive episodes were never as satisfying as I wanted them to be. Maybe that’s because the author wanted me to feel Leni’s frustration and incomprehension but instead they felt contrived. However, these disparagements are lost when ingesting the story as a whole. Days after finishing, the good parts have come forward and the imperfect have faded to the shadows of my memory.
The Great Alone is a beautiful and wild story about a family in crisis just trying to live out their one last hope. It is full of pain, optimism, secrets, love, and finding yourself. It’s not only fulfilling to read, it’s important.
Violence: Medium/High Language: Medium Adult Content: Medium