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A review by okiecozyreader
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’ve finally read this book. I’ve wanted to read it since it came out. I attended her book signing and listened to Kristin Hannah speak about this book when it came to paperback. My bookclub picked it and I was so buried in graduate school midterms and a library book fair, I just couldn’t read it. So glad the @bookishbffs picked it for their book read this month!
I went to Alaska for my husband’s 40th birthday bucket list. We got to go to an glacier and up to Fairbanks. I contemplated what it was like to live in a place that had light until midnight or so and never became dark in the summer; and likewise, how dark it might be in winter. I saw the airplanes/water planes people use to travel in the winter, and I realized what a different place it is to live. Recently, I read ZibbyBooks author Mary Otis’s book, Nobody Gets Out of Here Alice, short stories about Alaska that replicate the desperation and hardship of the land.
This book definitely gives you all the feels - love, longing, hardship, anger, regret, disappointment, escape… and is not at many times, an easy read. But the last chapter or so, make the whole book worth it.
When I heard her speak about this book, Hannah said that she is very careful to remove all the words that don’t matter. At 545 pages, you might not think that is true, but I felt like it really was (evidenced by the number of quotes I saved below). There isn’t a way I would have edited it down; and I appreciate the journey.
I will also say; I have thought about this book for days and the characters. I miss them and I want to know how they are doing. 😆
I didn’t realize how many quotes I loved. Going back through the book, I found so many others on the pages… but clearly I can’t keep them all. These were the ones I loved:
Great alone
“Leno caught her mother’s gaze, held it. In those wide blue eyes that held on to every nuance of expression, she saw her own anxiety reflected.” P114
“What’s it really like? … Winter…
Terrible and beautiful. It’s how you know if you’re cut out to be an Alaskan. …
The Great Alone, … that was what Robert Service called Alaska.” P114
“Leni saw suddenly how hope could break you, how it was a shiny lure for the unwary. What happened to you if you hoped too hard for the best and got the worst? Was it better not to hope at all, to prepare? Wasn’t that what her father’s lesson always was? Prepare for the worst.” P150
“Leni felt the sudden fragility of her world, of the world itself. She barely remembered Before.” P155
“But up here, lots of people has been one thing on the Outside and became another in Alaska. … Alaska was full of unexpected people - like the woman who lived in a broken-down school bus at Anchor Point and read palms.” P165
“Hope. A shiny thing, a lure for the unwary. She knew how seductive it could be, and how dangerous.” P240
“He also knew that love could freeze over, become a kind of thin ice all its own.” P249
“Leni had gotten used to seeing herself in shards of glass. Herself in pieces.” P262
“She watched clouds move slowly across the sky, change shapes, became something new before her eyes. She wished change were so easy for people.” P267
“Leni recognized his Big Idea smile. She’d seen it lots of times. A beginning; he loved them.” P271
“Fear, Leni learned, was not the small, dark closet she’d always imagined: walls pressed in close, a ceiling you bumped your head on, a floor cold to the touch.
No.
Fear was a mansion, one room after another, connected by endless hallways.” P344
“How sad that her hope felt like loss.” P348
“Leni wondered if one person could ever really save another, or if it was the kind of thing you had to do for yourself.” P400
“Leni thought maybe that he would haunt her. Not just him, but the idea of him, the sad and scary truth that you could love and hate the same person at the same time, that you could feel a deep and abiding loss and shame for your own weakness and still be glad this awful thing had been done.” P414
“Instinctively, she lifted her camera and minimized her view of the world. It was how she managed her memories, how she processed the world. In pictures. With a camera, she could crop and reframe her life.” P466
Chapter 31
“Every one of your scars breaks my heart and puts it back together.” P529
“Now she knew there were a hundred ways to be lost and even more ways to be found.” P538
My Alaska
“Someone said to me once that Alaska didn’t create character, it revealed it.
The sad truth is that the darkness in Alaska revealed the darkness in my father.” P544
“In the vast expanse of this unpredictable wilderness, you will either become your best self and flourish, or you will run away, screaming, from the dark and the cold and the hardship. There is no middle ground, no safe place; not here, in the Great Alone.” P546
I went to Alaska for my husband’s 40th birthday bucket list. We got to go to an glacier and up to Fairbanks. I contemplated what it was like to live in a place that had light until midnight or so and never became dark in the summer; and likewise, how dark it might be in winter. I saw the airplanes/water planes people use to travel in the winter, and I realized what a different place it is to live. Recently, I read ZibbyBooks author Mary Otis’s book, Nobody Gets Out of Here Alice, short stories about Alaska that replicate the desperation and hardship of the land.
This book definitely gives you all the feels - love, longing, hardship, anger, regret, disappointment, escape… and is not at many times, an easy read. But the last chapter or so, make the whole book worth it.
When I heard her speak about this book, Hannah said that she is very careful to remove all the words that don’t matter. At 545 pages, you might not think that is true, but I felt like it really was (evidenced by the number of quotes I saved below). There isn’t a way I would have edited it down; and I appreciate the journey.
I will also say; I have thought about this book for days and the characters. I miss them and I want to know how they are doing. 😆
I didn’t realize how many quotes I loved. Going back through the book, I found so many others on the pages… but clearly I can’t keep them all. These were the ones I loved:
Great alone
“Leno caught her mother’s gaze, held it. In those wide blue eyes that held on to every nuance of expression, she saw her own anxiety reflected.” P114
“What’s it really like? … Winter…
Terrible and beautiful. It’s how you know if you’re cut out to be an Alaskan. …
The Great Alone, … that was what Robert Service called Alaska.” P114
“Leni saw suddenly how hope could break you, how it was a shiny lure for the unwary. What happened to you if you hoped too hard for the best and got the worst? Was it better not to hope at all, to prepare? Wasn’t that what her father’s lesson always was? Prepare for the worst.” P150
“Leni felt the sudden fragility of her world, of the world itself. She barely remembered Before.” P155
“But up here, lots of people has been one thing on the Outside and became another in Alaska. … Alaska was full of unexpected people - like the woman who lived in a broken-down school bus at Anchor Point and read palms.” P165
“Hope. A shiny thing, a lure for the unwary. She knew how seductive it could be, and how dangerous.” P240
“He also knew that love could freeze over, become a kind of thin ice all its own.” P249
“Leni had gotten used to seeing herself in shards of glass. Herself in pieces.” P262
“She watched clouds move slowly across the sky, change shapes, became something new before her eyes. She wished change were so easy for people.” P267
“Leni recognized his Big Idea smile. She’d seen it lots of times. A beginning; he loved them.” P271
“Fear, Leni learned, was not the small, dark closet she’d always imagined: walls pressed in close, a ceiling you bumped your head on, a floor cold to the touch.
No.
Fear was a mansion, one room after another, connected by endless hallways.” P344
“How sad that her hope felt like loss.” P348
“Leni wondered if one person could ever really save another, or if it was the kind of thing you had to do for yourself.” P400
“Leni thought maybe that he would haunt her. Not just him, but the idea of him, the sad and scary truth that you could love and hate the same person at the same time, that you could feel a deep and abiding loss and shame for your own weakness and still be glad this awful thing had been done.” P414
“Instinctively, she lifted her camera and minimized her view of the world. It was how she managed her memories, how she processed the world. In pictures. With a camera, she could crop and reframe her life.” P466
Chapter 31
“Every one of your scars breaks my heart and puts it back together.” P529
“Now she knew there were a hundred ways to be lost and even more ways to be found.” P538
My Alaska
“Someone said to me once that Alaska didn’t create character, it revealed it.
The sad truth is that the darkness in Alaska revealed the darkness in my father.” P544
“In the vast expanse of this unpredictable wilderness, you will either become your best self and flourish, or you will run away, screaming, from the dark and the cold and the hardship. There is no middle ground, no safe place; not here, in the Great Alone.” P546
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse
Moderate: Alcoholism