“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.”
What a setting! That's my first impression after finishing this engrossing, sad, adventurous novel. Alaska in its wildness during the 70s, where summers are to prepare for winters and winters are cold, icy, brutal, dark. An Alaska with gorgeous nature scenes, animals, a life back to its basic meaning where surviving comes first.
But this also a very sad, deep, disturbing story of a family ruined by the consequences of the Vietnam war on the father, a family where violence set the mood of the day, where a wife is subdued to her love, but where her daughter comes first.
Leni, the main character of this Alaskan family saga, is such a wise girl, strong and determined to change their lives for the best. She fights, she succumbs, she loves, she loses, she wins, she stays by.
A very touching novel about families and love and the power of nature. Great reading.
“Leni had never known anyone who had died before. She had seen death on television and read about it in her beloved books, but now she saw the truth of it. In literature, death was many things - a message, catharsis, retribution. There were deaths that came from a beating heart that stopped and deaths of another kind, a choice made, like Frodo going to the Grey Havens. Death made you cry, filled you with sadness, but in the best of her books, there was peace, too, satisfaction, a sense of the story ending as it should.
In real life, she saw, it wasn't like that. It was sadness opening up inside of you, changing how you saw the world.”
In real life, she saw, it wasn't like that. It was sadness opening up inside of you, changing how you saw the world.”
Overall rating: 8 Plot: 8 Writing style: 7 Cover: 6,5
Title: The great alone
The Plot:
Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, is caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that Alaska will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown. At once an epic story of human survival and love, and an intimate portrait of a family tested beyond endurance, The Great Alone offers a glimpse into a vanishing way of life in America. With her trademark combination of elegant prose and deeply drawn characters, Kristin Hannah has delivered an enormously powerful story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the remarkable and enduring strength of women.
The Author:
Kristin Hannah is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale, Winter Garden, Night Road, and Firefly Lane. Her novel, The Nightingale, has been published in 43 languages and is currently in movie production at TriStar Pictures, which also optioned her novel, The Great Alone. Her novel, Home Front has been optioned for film by 1492 Films (produced the Oscar-nominated The Help) with Chris Columbus attached to direct. Kristin is a former-lawyer-turned writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Her novel, Firefly Lane, became a runaway bestseller in 2009, a touchstone novel that brought women together, and The Nightingale, in 2015 was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, iTunes, Library Journal, Paste, The Wall Street Journal and The Week. Additionally, the novel won the coveted Goodreads and People’s Choice Awards. The audiobook of The Nightingale won the Audiobook of the Year Award in the fiction category.
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