"A woman has to be tough as steel up here. You can't count on anyone to save you and your children. You have to be willing to save yourselves. And you have to learn fast. In Alaska you can make one mistake. One. The second one will kill you."
Alaska, 1974. Untamed. Unpredictable. A story of a family in crisis struggling to survive at the edge of the world. It is also a story of young and enduring love.
Cora Allbright and her husband, Ernt - a recently returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war - uproot their thirteen-year-old daughter, Leni, to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.
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. It is the finest example of Hannah's ability to weave together the deeply personal with the universal.
This novel is about the setting as much as plot or character. The cold and hardships of living in Alaska are excellently portrayed in this book. The author has brought the environment completely alive, from the long dark winters to the long days of spring and summer. Despite my reading this during a heatwave here in England (very rare) there were times I reached for my wrap such was her ability to draw the reader into the book. Her research has come from her own experience of her fathers love for adventure and their own residence in the location in which the book is set.
The characters are carefully drawn and easy to become involved with. There are some truly wonderful characters in this book. I found myself rooting for Leni, Cora and Matthew throughout and I would challenge anyone not to love Large Marge. Ms. Hannah is extremely skilled at developing her characters and bringing them vividly to life.
Combined with a plot which is advanced in an easy to read narrative, these three factors all come together to form a totally gripping novel.
My only small criticism was that some of the story was a little too sugary and ultimately predictable for my taste, but that is entirely personal. I continue to love this author's writing and I have read and reviewed The Nightingale (in fact I have read this twice and was one of my top ten favourite books of 2016) and Night Road - you can read my reviews by clicking on the title. One thing that makes me very happy is that the author has a long back list which I am looking forward to reading in the future.
Do you have a favourite book written by Kristin Hannah? I would love to hear about it.
ISBN: 978 1250193773
This novel is about the setting as much as plot or character. The cold and hardships of living in Alaska are excellently portrayed in this book. The author has brought the environment completely alive, from the long dark winters to the long days of spring and summer. Despite my reading this during a heatwave here in England (very rare) there were times I reached for my wrap such was her ability to draw the reader into the book. Her research has come from her own experience of her fathers love for adventure and their own residence in the location in which the book is set.
The characters are carefully drawn and easy to become involved with. There are some truly wonderful characters in this book. I found myself rooting for Leni, Cora and Matthew throughout and I would challenge anyone not to love Large Marge. Ms. Hannah is extremely skilled at developing her characters and bringing them vividly to life.
Combined with a plot which is advanced in an easy to read narrative, these three factors all come together to form a totally gripping novel.
My only small criticism was that some of the story was a little too sugary and ultimately predictable for my taste, but that is entirely personal. I continue to love this author's writing and I have read and reviewed The Nightingale (in fact I have read this twice and was one of my top ten favourite books of 2016) and Night Road - you can read my reviews by clicking on the title. One thing that makes me very happy is that the author has a long back list which I am looking forward to reading in the future.
Do you have a favourite book written by Kristin Hannah? I would love to hear about it.
ISBN: 978 1250193773
Publisher: Macmillan USA
About the Author:
Kristin Hannah is a New York Times bestselling author. She is a lawyer-turned-writer and is the mother of one son. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle and Hawaii. Her first novel published in the UK, Night Road, was one of eight books selected for the 2011 TV Book Club Summer Read and The Nightingale was a New York Times number one bestseller, selling almost three million copies worldwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment