The Great Alone had an appealing premise for an upcoming book to read. A family heads off to the edge of wilderness in Alaska to live off the land. The author herself had this kind of experience and she sets the story in an area where her family had a wilderness lodge. The portrait of Alaska is all of its lure and dangers is lovingly painted.
But, the novel is less about learning to live with less in Alaska under harsh conditions, and more about living under the roof of a broken family, ruined by domestic abuse, with nowhere to go for help.
“There is no middle ground, no safe place; not here, in the Great Alone.”
This is the central story of the novel, a young girl’s struggle to cope with an abusive father in an unforgiving isolated place. She has only one friend and he is isolated from her. The story is told in a YA style, with mostly black-or-white characters, dramatic, and emotionally charged. Themes of resilience, love and loss, survival engage the reader. The Great Alone was a best selling book, ready for a wide audience.
The setting is very important and Alaska itself is a both a place and a metaphor for the challenges faced by the protagonists of the story, but sometimes the treatment of Alaska as an unique place is a bit overdone. In fact, “The Great Alone” was originally The Yukon, as found in Robert Service’s poetry:
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? —
Then you’ve a hunch what the music meant…hunger and night and the stars.
The unforgiving environment could have been the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, or the northern parts or mountainous areas of all of the larger provinces of Canada. “The Great Alone” as coined by Robert Service could be many possible areas where people live in remote, unforgiving wilderness. Kristin Hannah chose Alaska and it is lovingly portrayed with detail, wound into the fabric of the story.
I enjoyed the book, but at times I thought it lacked subtlety and sophistication. It feel like it was written ready to be easily made into a TV movie script, and sure enough, it is in the early stages at this time. A book destined for popularity, but not literary awards. My rating 4.3 out of 5.0 stars
An audio-excerpt for those interested in reading or listening to the book: