A pretty little bird, South Bruny National Park, Bruny Island. June 2021.
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
The story itself was fine, with the descriptions of the Alaskan landscape and weather rich and vivid. However, the novel is hamstrung with a pedestrian narrative, shallow characters and a frustratingly predictable plot. It is also far too long and could have benefited by shedding a good third of its bulk.
Given the intensely claustrophobic setting, it amazes me that the three central characters lack any real depth or plausibility. The Cora exists (it seems) to be little more than an irritating and hapless victim. Her tormenter husband Ernt – the stereotypical damaged Vietnam veteran – is a hollow caricature. Given that the author had nearly 600 pages, I cannot understand that she gives us nothing more than Cora’s feeble assertions that “he’s a decent man” over and over. Seriously, a bit of backstory or something that might SHOW the reader why Cora puts up with the violence and paranoia would have helped. Instead, this leaves us with their daughter Leni. I liked Leni, but I struggled to reconcile her intelligence and headstrong nature with a complete lack of agency in dealing with her father.
Suffice to say that they are a frustrating family unit.
I would also note the unevenness in tone. At times this read like a novel for young adults. The opening was littered with pop cultural references resembling the lazy tropes of film and television (CCR on the radio, references to a serial killer on the loose in Washington state, Nixon and Ford). We get it; it's the 1970s. So much telling rather than showing, and even the weather is reduced to a predictable and obvious plot device.
Still, despite the lurch into lifetime movie melodrama territory, I finished the whole thing, so it cannot have been all bad.
⭐ ⭐
Comments