kristin hannah has a brilliant way of setting up a story. I admit that i judge books harshly within the first couple of chapters. if it doesn’t manage to keep my interest in that short period of time, then i might not finish it (or, if i do, i will not enjoy a single portion of it). kristin hannah knows best how to capture my interest, and then how to keep it. this book kept my interest the entire way through. not a second went by where i wasn’t trying desperately to turn the page, my mind delivering a mantra of, what’s next, what’s next, what’s next? in the end, i am plastering on a 4/5 stars to this wonderful novel.
story recap
this story begins with leni allbright, a thirteen-year old girl growing up in the 70’s. her family moves around often enough that she has no friends; in fact, she’s just started life at a new school when her father, ernt allbright, a former POW with a dangerous streak, decides to uproot the family again and move them all off to a cabin in a tiny alaskan town, where he intends to survive off the land.
what follows is a dramatic series of events. leni’s father, she learns, is more than fragile; he’s a broken man, and he gets worse in the dark. alaska, with its fourteen-hour winter nights, offers no reprieve for ernt, and certainly not for leni or her mother, cora allbright, a beautiful woman who intends to follow her husband wherever he may go, even if it walls them off from the rest of the world.
thoughts
SPOILERS!!! READ WITH CAUTION!!!
while reading, i kept coming across issues that bugged me and characters that annoyed me. i thought my review would be a scathing display of frustration. i thought “i doubt i’ll rate this book higher than a three.” however, when i was able to sit and think things through, i realized most of my frustrations simply came from a place of care for these characters.
sure, i hated ernt and his abuse that he delivered to his wife, but i remembered that PTSD wasn’t even officially recognized until 1980, which is a couple of years after the main story takes place. he wasn’t diagnosed because there was nothing there to diagnose him with. he was a broken man and there was no system in place to help him through his nightmares and struggles. leni mentions a few times that he truly does love his family, and i don’t doubt that. his time spent in a POW camp changed him and he’s offered no help at all. it’s, unfortunately, a sad truth that many of these returning veterans from the vietnam war suffered greatly throughout the rest of their lives. i think hannah did a fantastic job in describing the fear, and the love, both leni and cora show for ernt.
i know i’ve read several comments on cora’s character. she’s fragile and allows herself to be abused by ernt, but i don’t think that’s out of the norm. many women stay with their abusive partners. many women, like cora, convince themselves that their abuser really doesn’t mean them harm, that they’ll one day return to the loving person they once were. again, another unfortunate truth that hannah doesn’t shy away from. cora wants the best for her daughter, at least, though that makes me question her decision to move into the alaska wilderness. but just because cora does something i would never do doesn’t mean she’s not a realistic character. i appreciated cora, though i felt the frustration many others felt. i mean, in the end she did do the unthinkable for leni, so i came to truly love her as a character, flaws and all. flaws are what make people people.
leni is the final character of our three main characters. i liked her. i hated some of her later choices, but i thought she was interesting enough and neutral enough that she offered reliability in her views and ideas. she is molded into the alaskan wilderness and grows tough enough to deal with such horrible circumstances. if she’s stupidly in love later on, i can’t fault her; she’s been alone all this time, and she finally has a handsome boy to pull her from her walled-off life (literally). one thing that did bug me was the fact she was seemingly okay with dead animals in the house. she grew up in suburbs, it looks like, and she and her mom were unsure about learning how to shoot which makes me think she’s unused to dead animals. yet she doesn’t even bat an eye when her dad brings in their first catch. there were a few instances that made me stop and say, “a thirteen-year old girl might have an issue with this,” and then i wondered if leni was too much of a blank slate. maybe, though, i was the only thirteen-year old that cried at the sight of roadkill.
straying away from the main characters, i had a few more issues with tiny, little things. why does everyone introduce themselves with nicknames? large marge, gene the generator (and a handful of other names she tosses at the allbrights upon their first meeting), crazy pete, etc. why does this town have so many people with nicknames? why do they all find it necessary to introduce themselves first thing with odd nicknames? i’m being nitpicky, perhaps, but it bugged me. also, why is everyone crazy? seriously, every single character just seems a bit over-the-top insane to me. i mean, you have to be insane if you move to the-middle-of-nowhere in alaska, so i’m definitely being nitpicky. and i like crazy — it might not have been as fun if it wasn’t so crazy.
matthew is another character i wanted to talk about. i like him. i really do like him. is it unbelievable to me that he would do all that for a girl he spent very little time with (letters count, sure, but it’s already difficult to keep up long-distance relationships in the modern age, and i assume back then might’ve been worse)? yes. do i wish some guy would do the same for me? also yes. he’s a trooper, that one, and he survived despite the odds stacked against him, which is awesome. however, the idea of him doing all that, then surviving because of his love for leni (at least, that’s how it seems he survives based off the book), then also somehow surviving again despite doctors saying, “he won’t,” just seems…romanticized? if one of these three ideas were true, and only one, i’d have less issue believing it. all three? in, like, one hundred pages? it made me think I was reading a soap opera. (a really fun soap opera, though.)
this actually brings me to my next quip — why did SHTF in the final leg of the book? i get that you need to reach a climax towards the end, but why are there several climaxes to get through? first there’s a fall from a cliff and two days of surviving with no help – climax. then there’s ernt getting shot – climax. then there’s leni getting arrested – odd climax/problem that ends in, like, three pages? it sort of seemed like hannah couldn’t decide which turn would be the best one to take, so she just took all of the turns. but you know what? it was a fun ride, and if you suspend your disbelief, it’s still an entertaining read.
regardless of my tiny issues, i did enjoy this book. lots of people compared it to the nightingale, which is arguably hannah’s most famous and popular book, but i found the comparisons to be unfair. it’s a completely different story in a completely different location with completely different characters. it’s written in third-person, but still through the point-of-view of leni (and a couple times of matthew – one thing i forgot i hated from nightingale was the random pov-changes, but that’s a personal issue, as i like the book to remain on one character’s thoughts or else establish early on that it will focus on many characters. the inconsistent pov-switching bugs me), and leni is a thirteen-year old girl when the book starts, and then a lovestruck young adult when the book ends. obviously it’ll be different. obviously it won’t be as impactful to most people. i think we need to enjoy it for what it was and focus on hannah’s fantastic writing and fun storytelling. issues aside, it was a great read.
all in all?
if you didn’t like nightingale, i recommend this book. if you did like nightingale, i recommend this book. was it my favorite book? No. would i sing its praises from a rooftop? also no. but I enjoyed it for the fun, dramatic, and gripping piece of literature that it was and i think most other people will be able to say the same thing.
Alaska didn’t create character; it revealed it.
jefferswag 