Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - The Great Alone

Maybe someday I’ll stop sobbing long enough to actually review this book coherently. For now, please suffer through a few of my disjointed thoughts:

I have never, ever cried in a book as much as this one. I don’t cry easily, but this book had me LITERALLY WEEPING and gasping for air. Full on ugly crying.

It was beautiful and haunting and horrific and wholesome. I can’t even explain the way this book broke me and put me back together.

I have never wanted a happy ending so much as I did for Leni. I was gutted by the abuse and loss she suffered. I loved watching Cora grow and become the mother Leni needed. The way this book touched on motherhood was powerful and heartbreaking.

The commentary on domestic abuse, PTSD, alcoholism…painful to read but so well done.

And Matthew. I sobbed through every one of his POVs, and that’s all I need to say about that.

I will never forget this book.

Content Warnings

iamahmedkhalifa's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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melamaks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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theleppy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

What I liked: The descriptions of Alaska.

What I didn't like:

The characters: I liked a grand total of 2 characters in this book. Thelma who maybe has 4 lines in the whole book but she delivered the only satisfying moment: Telling Ernt he's fucking insane and telling him she wants nothing to do with him. (I cheered!) and Large Marge because she also kept pointing out how shitty Ernt is. Large Marge's sole purpose in the book seems to be to bail out Leni and Cora though.
Speaking of Leni, our main character: I didn't really feel attached to her and by the 2nd half of the book when she was 18 I was just annoyed with her terrible decisions. I felt like she was constantly being bailed out by others. She had potential to grow and be tough but instead it's Large Marge bailing her out or Matthew or Matthew's dad and then her grandparents. In the first part of the book they repeat the "you only make 1 mistake in Alaska because the 2nd one will kill you" and yet she completely loses her head over her boyfriend and does stupid thing after stupid thing with no consequence to her self except stupidly getting pregnant.

Plot:

I guessed immediately (within the first 30pages) that Leni and/or Cora was going to kill Ernt. It was so obvious I kept hoping it wouldn't happen or if it did that it would be premeditated because doing it to protect one another during a violent beating was TOO OBVIOUS. Then it happens exactly as expected and I rolled my eyes and groaned. I'm really annoyed to with how 2 characters imply multiple times that they could easily make Ernt "disappear" with no consequence but that doesn't happen. Instead it's Cora and Leni super suspiciously running off and assuming fake identities.

The painfully predictable Romeo and Juliet romance plot I guessed would happen the moment Matthew was introduced had me so *mad*. Leni questions things at 14 about her parents and love and that felt like it comes to nothing because she chucks all reason out the window for Matthew. Break the freaking cycle! I thought this would be a book of home and environmental dangers that forges a girl into a tough woman who breaks the family trauma cycle and survived to be tough and happy. Instead it was just what? trauma and drama for nothing. She gets knocked up the first time she has sex with her boyfriend days before they will be off at college together because the book needed to be as melodramatic as possible BUT WAIT IT GETS WORSE! They run away into a super dangerous area and uuugg it unfolds exactly as you think it will...

I'm also frustrated because her dad Ernt is a former POW and has severe PTSD and it is used as a huge excuse for his deplorable behavior and there needed to be a contrast to show that his deplorable behavior isn't what happens to all people with that past. Ernt was a freaking terrible person before the war anyway He got a 16 year old Cora pregnant when he was 25 and manipulated her away from her parents, married her and then chose to go to war and leave them (the book explicitly states he SIGNED UP). I have no sympathy for him. He would have still been a jealous alcoholic who beats his wife and daughter regardless of his POW past and PTSD.

How is this book considered historical? Aside from Ernt being a veteran of Vietnam and a brief mention of stereotypical 70s clothing I feel like the time period it takes place in had no importance to the plot. It's not like it being the 70s was a reason for Cora not divorcing Ernt because divorce happened then and besides another character is divorced in the novel. So why is this considered historical?

Oh and I was livid with the trash that happens at the end with her mom dying of cancer and writing and notarizing a freaking murder confession only for that to not actually bail Leni out because again Leni makes a stupid decision and even that ends up not mattering because surprise surprise she gets bailed out *again* (for like the 5th or 6th time) by Matthew's rich dad. What was the point? to get Leni and a now crippled Matthew together? She could of just called, she has a good reason like you know their child she kept from him for years.

Content Warnings

nickoliver's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I’m honestly proud of finally reading this one. It’s always been on my Goodreads TBR, but it’s never been a priority. Partly because I barely pick up historical fiction, and partly because it was almost 500 pages and that was intimidating. So the fact that I suddenly got into the mood to read this and actually did it? *pats himself on the shoulder* It did take me a while to finish it, both because it was fairly slow-paced and also just due to my depression having been really bad.

I was interested in this story particularly because of its time and place. The 1970s weren't an unknown time period for me to have as a setting, but Alaska in the 1970s? Or Alaska in general, even? I was really excited to read more about that time in history, especially the way Hannah portrayed the post-Vietnam War atmosphere in the US.

I have to say I loved Alaska in this book, but it did leave me with some questions. It made it seem like no one in Alaska has electricity or plumbing or wants to be a part of civilization, but ... surely, there are bigger cities up there? So did Leni just talk about her experience in that remote part of the state she was in and it just sounded like she was talking about all of Alaska, or was Alaska truly like this back in the 70s? Because Alaska is huge, and the way it was described made it seem fairly homogeneous, as if it was all the same untameable wilderness.

(Though I loved it that I was pretty much shown and explained why the majority of Alaskans are Republicans. Literally everybody in this book sans Leni, Mr. Walker, and Large Marge (and possibly Leni’s mother, but not sure about that one) would’ve voted for Trump.)

The plot itself made me very nervous at first, because I had no idea where it was going to go. Like, with The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, I knew that it was going to be about WWII, and I could adjust my expectations (and waterworks) accordingly. But here, I didn’t know where the plot would take me, because all I knew going into it was that it was about a Vietnam veteran who wasn’t easy to be around and who took his wife and daughter to live in the isolated wilderness of Alaska, which worsened his condition.

And when I tell you it was painful. It was really hard to read, because the characters made me go through a very emotional rollercoaster. I was constantly extremely angry at Leni’s parents, but at the same time, I felt like I couldn’t really criticise them? For one, her dad was a POW and was dealing with untreated PTSD, so many issues he had made perfect sense. For example, I understood why he wanted to keep his family apart from the rest of the world (he believed WWIII was right around the corner), or why he didn’t do well with enclosed spaces and nothing to do. Secondly, I also understood why Leni’s mother didn’t leave him, despite the fact that being without him would’ve made her and Leni’s life so much easier. Because Leni’s father had sought Cora out when she was a literal child - I think sixteen or seventeen? - and he was twenty-five. So she was obviously taken advantage of. And of course, it isn't always easy to leave an abusive relationship, especially if you, like Cora, still have great memories of the good, pre-war times, and I didn't want to stand there and criticise Cora for staying by Ernt's side.

Also, Hannah did an amazing job at writing a toxic, unhealthy relationship. The way Leni’s parents weren’t good for each other, yet weren’t able to actually leave the other one? The way Leni suffered from it? Absolutely heartbreaking, but very well done. I also have to say I did really appreciate that at no point in the book did Hannah try to make it seem like what they had was something you’d want for yourself.

Nevertheless, I often found myself being angry, especially at Leni’s father and especially the further into the book I got. While I started out feeling slightly sympathetic towards him, that feeling started to vanish more and more. The way he acted in their town, as if he’d been a part of it his whole life and everyone would share his feelings and opinions; the way he hated Tom Walker just because he was richer (but not rich in the way he kept saying); the way he made Leni’s life harder just because she had the audacity to love Tom Walker’s son; the way he hit his wife and excused it by saying his “love for her was just too big”; the way he never even tried to be better and just kept making excuses for his behaviour. Leni and her mother had to live in constant fear, and the most heartbreaking part of that was the fact that Leni’s father thought he was protecting his family from the rest of the world, when in reality, the only one they needed to be protected from was him.

Leni’s mother was also infuriating. Like I said, I get that she was too young when she got with him, and that their love was poisonous and toxic, but she kept putting her love for her husband before the safety of her daughter - hell, before everything concerning her daughter. And she never put her daughter first

until the moment her father hit her for the first time. Like, I’m glad she finally put her foot down! But why not until this late? Leni could’ve used her help years earlier.

The romance in this book was, in a word, absolutely heartbreaking. Leni and Matthew met when she started school in Alaska, so when she was thirteen. They were just friends at first, and I really adored them together a lot. Their love story was filled with a lot of tragedies and they didn't have it easy, and many of the things that happened left me almost in disbelief. I was really invested in their story after a certain point and couldn't stop reading.

I do have to admit that there were some scenes that made me angry at Leni - she acted really stupid in the face of love sometimes (for example, kept sneaking out to meet Matthew when her dad wasn’t home instead of waiting until college and risking her literal life) -, but at the end of the day, that was probably realistic. She was a teenager with hormones, after all.

Then, quickly the few negative things that made me not give it 5 stars in the end.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Black rep in the book. There were some racists, and the Black woman in this book, Large Marge (who was also kind of the stereotypical strong woman who wasn’t to be weak and intimidated), was never defended against or said anything about it. The racist thing that was being said wasn't even addressed, and I have to admit, it was hard sometimes to believe in the town's sense of community when I knew how some of them thought about Black people.
There were also quite a few Native Americans in the book, and I did like them, even if their description sometimes felt a bit clumsy. I just wished there would’ve been more talk about colonization and what happened to those Natives, though I guess it’s probably realistic that they didn’t mention that. I mean, Americans barely learn about that in school now, never mind back in the 70s at a school with less than ten students.

I also read some reviews that criticised the way Hannah handled Vietnam vets. It kind of fed into this stereotype of veterans with PTSD always being violent and lashing out at their families, without there being much depth into the psyche of it. Like, it’s not like it was a book about a POW who genuinely tried to overcome his trauma; he just festered in it. And I can see how that could be frustrating to read, especially if you or a loved one is a vet. Personally, I didn’t mind it, mostly because I feel like it was realistic? And vets are often treated horribly in terms of their PTSD, so it didn’t feel that frustrating that Leni’s father was never seen in therapy or something.

This book did definitely kind of put me into the mood to read more historical fiction, and also more of Kristin Hannah! I might also re-read “The Nightingale” one day. We’ll see. Overall, this book was very emotionally charged and certainly packed a punch.

Content Warnings

leanderson's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

bedtimesandbooks's review against another edition

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dark hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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