A strong sense of danger is used from the beginning to create
suspense. The first person they meet
tells them, “’Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with
a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a
saying: Up here you can make one
mistake. The second one will kill you.” Later they are told, “’Believe me, no matter
how much you’ve read and studied, you can never quite prepare for your first
Alaskan winter.’” As expected, the
family encounters all the expected dangers.
As darkness and isolation become a daily part of life, Ernt’s mental
health deteriorates and Cora and Leni are constantly on edge: “it was like living with a wild animal. . . .
The natural-born predator could seem domesticated, even friendly, could lick
your throat affectionately or rub up against you to get a back scratch. But you knew, or should know, that it was a
wild thing you lived with, that a collar and leash and a bowl of food might
tame the actions of the beast, but couldn’t change its essential nature. In a split second, less time than it took to
exhale a breath, that wolf could claim its nature and turn, fangs bared. It was exhausting to worry all the time, to
study Dad’s every movement and the tone of his voice.”
The problem is that the author keeps piling on the trauma so the reader
may feel as if he/she is suffering from a minor case of PTSD. It’s as if Hannah wants the reader to cry and
then cry some more. The story, which
begins well, deteriorates into an overwrought and melodramatic narrative. There’s certainly a Romeo and Juliet element
to the love story between Leni and Matthew.
Then, to reward the reader for his/her emotional distress, Hannah
devises an overly dramatic, almost miraculous, happy ending worthy of a
Hallmark movie.
The book explores domestic violence.
I was not convinced, however, by
the repeated suggestion that Ernt’s experiences in Vietnam made him a monster;
more accurate is the description that “those
are all excuses set at the feet of a man who is just rotting from the inside.” Cora is in many ways a typical abuse victim who
keeps forgiving her husband, but there is a problem with her behaviour: she refuses to do anything about her
situation until something happens and then she reacts dramatically. The reason she gives for her change means, in
fact, that she should have done something after the incident with the hare’s heart. Then, after taking the action she does, she seems
to suffer less than one would expect. I
also expected Leni to have more resentment towards her mother for the type of
life she forces her daughter to live for so long.
The most positive aspect of the book is its descriptions of Alaska’s natural
beauty: “Waves lapping the muddy beach
left a sparkling residue. On the
opposite shore, the mountains were a lush, deep purple at their bases and stark
white at their peaks.” With the repeated
references to blue-white glaciers and cerulean skies and “the exquisite,
breathtaking beauty,” it is not surprising that Leni forms a connection to the
land.
The description of Alaska’s people
seems less realistic. Is absolutely everyone
living there an oddball? In the book there’s
a big-city prosecutor who takes “showers at the Laundromat” and runs a “store that
would have welcomed Laura Ingalls Wilder” and a university economics professor
who captains a fishing boat and a NYC police officer who lives in broken-down
school bus and reads palms: “If you
wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one
in Alaska was going to say crap to you.”
Many of the characters would be perfect for the spate of reality shows
set in Alaska.
Like many of these reality shows, the book becomes overly melodramatic. That over-emotionalism did not appeal but I persevered;
unfortunately, my only reward was a totally unrealistic ending.
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