Readers,
Quiet weekend taking in the delights of Melbourne (played tennis, lay on couch, drank too much beer at comedy show, engaged in light socialization with ladies at church). It's quite a city, this city: home of the trend-of-the-moment hipster, the disaffected (or affected) Brit, bungalow dwellers, high-rise renters, and many a quietly-desperate business(wo)man. They say that Melbourne is the "most livable" city in the world (this is only a partial dig at Sydney, and to be perfectly honest, it's a bit of a stretch. Clearly the judges on that panel have never been to San Diego).
For all it's "livability" - Melbourne is not a "destination." It's steady. It's not a place that people run away to - like New York, L.A., New Zealand, Argentina, Bali, (dare I say Sydney?). When was the last time Barry stopped you at the watercooler and said, "Me and the wife are just leaving it all behind - we're going to give the dream a go and move to: MELBOURNE." Never happened.
Kristin Hannah's novel The Great Alone is about the consummate run-away destination: Alaska. And it's about a family that is, in fact, running away: from their past, their families, and themselves. The premise is this: Leni's father, returned from Vietnam and suffering from PTSD, moves the family to a plot of land outside a tiny town in Alaska. There, they must embed themselves with the locals, prepare to survive the winter, and figure out (above all) how to survive with one another. Leni's father is violent, mean, and looking to stir up trouble in the town. Leni's mother is her best friend, wild and loving, but also blinded by love from realizing what a dangerous man her husband has become. This book is a little bit Gilmore Girls gone wrong, a little National Geographic's "Alaska: The Last Frontier," and a little bit Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (yes - I have indulged in all these delights. I will not apologise, readers).
I have very mixed feelings about this book, and part of me wondered whether I should even write about it. In general, I don't like to write about the books I don't enjoy. But I did enjoy this book - and so I think the fairest thing is for me to lay it all out, and you can decide:
Let's start with the bad (I'm a cup half empty kind of girl). The book is melodramatic, with plot twists designed to yank emotions, rather than pull the story forward. This is worsened by the fact that the writing itself has significant issues. It's full of cliches and wooden dialogue. At first, I thought this was because the novel is narrated by a child - but then Leni ages and the problem persists. This is distracting.
Despite all this, Hannah's characters make it through. New characters spring onto the page in 2D but then somehow persist, becoming more interesting with each page. In the end, we are left with a handful of portraits: people who have run away to Alaska, who have given up their lives in far off places and bought into a dream. What Hannah does best is show us these character's commitment to the illusion of that dream: "this is Alaska" they are always telling us, as if that were explanation enough, 'things are different here' they almost scream at you, meaning - "we are different." These are people insulated from the harshness of their way of life by the belief that they are somehow special, stronger, more enlightened, and more interesting than those on the lower 48. It may be that Hannah is less successful than she hopes in explaining why these people live where they do, but to me, the townspeople in The Great Alone seem awfully normal - protecting their own, and justifying their choices by whatever means necessary.
Readers, there's at least one moment every week when I convince myself it would be a good idea to "run away" from the most livable city on earth (go open a book shop in Scotland? Flee into virtual reality?). I feel about my home in New Zealand the way these characters feel about their beloved Alaska: it's different, at least to me. But reading The Great Alone reminded me of the danger of thinking that a new place is a silver bullet. Broken families don't get fixed by majestic landscape. Self-important people don't become less so by living in the wilderness. Demons come with us, even to the far north.
Here's Hannah summing up the feeling the family has upon arriving in Alaska, faced with a new way of life, "I feel like we've fallen down the rabbit hole,' Mama said...The air smelled of wood smoke and cigarette smoke and fresh-cut wood. It sounded of chain saws whirring, boards thumping onto piles, nails being hammered...The three of them stood there, gazing out at the homestead that was changing before their eyes."