NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
They met over their dogs. Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp (author of Drinking: A Love Story) became best friends, talking about everything from their love of books and their shared history of a struggle with alcohol to their relationships with men. Walking the woods of New England and rowing on the Charles River, these two private, self-reliant women created an attachment more profound than either of them could ever have foreseen. Then, several years into this remarkable connection, Knapp was diagnosed with cancer. With her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion, and courage in this gorgeous memoir about treasuring a best friend, and coming of age in midlife. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a celebration of the profound transformations that come from intimate connection—and it affirms, once again, why Gail Caldwell is recognized as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2010: "The flaw is the thing we love." Of all the passages worthy of dog-earing (or highlighting) in Let's Take the Long Way Home (and there are many), this one is the most powerful wellspring. It captures the very thing we hope to find in friendship: a person who admires and cares for us not in spite of our flaws, but in acceptance of them, as part and parcel of who we are. For Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp--two intensely driven, talented writers who found in each other an uncannily similar share of life experiences and ambitions--loving the flaws became a cornerstone of their friendship. This is a beautiful story of the best things about best friends: shared rituals and private jokes, long walks (in this case, with their dearly loved dogs) and longer talks, confessions and discoveries. It would be wrong to say that their friendship ended with Caroline's unexpected death, because it so obviously lives and breathes in the rich and wonderful tapestry of stories told here. --Anne Bartholomew
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Caldwell (A Strong West Wind) has managed to do the inexpressible in this quiet, fierce work: create a memorable offering of love to her best friend, Caroline Knapp, the writer (Drinking: A Love Story) who died of lung cancer at age 42 in 2002. The two met in the mid-1990s: "Finding Caroline was like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you had conceived." Both single, writers (Caldwell was then book critic for the Boston Globe), and living alone in the Cambridge area, the two women bonded over their dog runs in Fresh Pond Reservoir, traded lessons in rowing (Knapp's sport) and swimming (Caldwell's), and shared stories, clothes, and general life support as best friends. Moreover, both had stopped drinking at age 33 (Caldwell was eight years older than her friend); both had survived early traumas (Caldwell had had polio as a child; Knapp had suffered anorexia). Their attachment to each other was deeply, mutually satisfying, as Caldwell describes: "Caroline and I coaxed each other into the light." Yet Knapp's health began to falter in March 2002, with stagefour lung cancer diagnosed; by June she had died. Caldwell is unflinching in depicting her friend's last days, although her own grief nearly undid her; she writes of this desolating time with tremendously moving grace.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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More About the Author
Gail Caldwell is the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was a staff writer and critic for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is also the author of A Strong West Wind, a memoir of her native Texas. Caldwell lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
191 of 201 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
"I wanted the warmth of spontaneous connection and the freedom to be left alone." ~ Gail Caldwell
From the start of this profoundly beautiful story we know that Gail Caldwell loses her best friend Caroline Knapp. As she puts it so precisely, you can't "sidestep the cruelty of an intolerable loss." For about a third of this book the words were blurry because it is so moving. Just when I thought I had composed myself enough to read on, I cried again. Sometimes I'd read a sentence and reread it again and again because it was so true.
This is the story of two soul mates who love dogs, swimming and sculling. In some way it doesn't matter what they were doing, they just loved being together. After an outing they would find themselves both at home calling each other on the phone. Their friendship is deep, meaningful and essential!
There are some surprising details like how they both dated the same man. What are the chances of that happening? Then there is the fact that they both loved drinking at one point in their lives and overcame their addiction before meeting. Gail Caldwell talks briefly about her own drinking problem but mostly focuses on the friendship.
"Let's Take the Long Way Home" is a book that will work its way into your heart in ways few books ever will. I loved the warmth of Gail Caldwell's writing style and how she expresses such honest feelings in lucid prose. This is one of the best books I've read this year!
~The Rebecca Review
From the start of this profoundly beautiful story we know that Gail Caldwell loses her best friend Caroline Knapp. As she puts it so precisely, you can't "sidestep the cruelty of an intolerable loss." For about a third of this book the words were blurry because it is so moving. Just when I thought I had composed myself enough to read on, I cried again. Sometimes I'd read a sentence and reread it again and again because it was so true.
This is the story of two soul mates who love dogs, swimming and sculling. In some way it doesn't matter what they were doing, they just loved being together. After an outing they would find themselves both at home calling each other on the phone. Their friendship is deep, meaningful and essential!
There are some surprising details like how they both dated the same man. What are the chances of that happening? Then there is the fact that they both loved drinking at one point in their lives and overcame their addiction before meeting. Gail Caldwell talks briefly about her own drinking problem but mostly focuses on the friendship.
"Let's Take the Long Way Home" is a book that will work its way into your heart in ways few books ever will. I loved the warmth of Gail Caldwell's writing style and how she expresses such honest feelings in lucid prose. This is one of the best books I've read this year!
~The Rebecca Review
98 of 104 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Gail Caldwell's memoir is a touching account of friendship that is brief but all encompassing. Although she and Caroline Knapp are only friends for seven years before Caroline is felled by lung cancer, the two built a relationship that is deeper than what's enjoyed by many blood relatives.
Their lives contained many similarities. Both women are childless, single writers and former alcoholics who initially bond over their dogs, but their relationship deepens to the point where Gail says it was easy to mistake them for sisters or lovers.
Both women are loners which makes it seem kind of unlikely that they would form this lasting friendship, but their relationship works because they respect each other's boundaries and both believed in confronting problems head-on instead of stewing in silence.
Gail's account of her years as a functional alcoholic are stark and poignant. In one particularly bad moment, she passes out in a drunken stupor and breaks four ribs. This doesn't stop her from drinking and she fashions a portable bar by attaching a bag of ice and a flask of liquor to her crutches. It takes her a long time to accept that she was in fact an alcoholic and needed help to stop drinking. And unlike Caroline who'd written a book about her drinking problem, Gail never really liked to discuss this part of her life and they had been friends for a while before she ever broached the subject.
But despite all their other similarities, it is their devotion to their dogs that dominates most of the story. These women love their animals and spent lots of time and money training and caring for them. Gail reckons that it's sort of a maternal bond that you have with someone who is completely dependent on you for your survival, but the incongruity is that Gail, who is reclusive after she gives up drinking, was afraid of anyone needing her that much or of her needing anyone else that much. She was even reluctant to call Caroline after she was involved in an accident that landed her in the hospital.
Gail's friendship with Caroline was a gift that allowed her to grow and become a more open person, and her loss also taught Gail some hard lessons about grief and sorrow. This book is truly a remarkable tale about the intersection of the lives of two kindred spirits.
Their lives contained many similarities. Both women are childless, single writers and former alcoholics who initially bond over their dogs, but their relationship deepens to the point where Gail says it was easy to mistake them for sisters or lovers.
Both women are loners which makes it seem kind of unlikely that they would form this lasting friendship, but their relationship works because they respect each other's boundaries and both believed in confronting problems head-on instead of stewing in silence.
Gail's account of her years as a functional alcoholic are stark and poignant. In one particularly bad moment, she passes out in a drunken stupor and breaks four ribs. This doesn't stop her from drinking and she fashions a portable bar by attaching a bag of ice and a flask of liquor to her crutches. It takes her a long time to accept that she was in fact an alcoholic and needed help to stop drinking. And unlike Caroline who'd written a book about her drinking problem, Gail never really liked to discuss this part of her life and they had been friends for a while before she ever broached the subject.
But despite all their other similarities, it is their devotion to their dogs that dominates most of the story. These women love their animals and spent lots of time and money training and caring for them. Gail reckons that it's sort of a maternal bond that you have with someone who is completely dependent on you for your survival, but the incongruity is that Gail, who is reclusive after she gives up drinking, was afraid of anyone needing her that much or of her needing anyone else that much. She was even reluctant to call Caroline after she was involved in an accident that landed her in the hospital.
Gail's friendship with Caroline was a gift that allowed her to grow and become a more open person, and her loss also taught Gail some hard lessons about grief and sorrow. This book is truly a remarkable tale about the intersection of the lives of two kindred spirits.
47 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This beautiful memoir of friendship could only come from someone who has experienced an intimate emotional connection of the highest level with another human being. Gail Caldwell had that connection with fellow writer Caroline Knapp, then lost it when Knapp died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer.
I was consumed by Knapp's own memoir, Drinking: A Love Story many years ago. I remember reading of Knapp's death not long after that and feeling so pained by the fact that she had survived alcoholism only to be robbed of her life just a few years later. Caldwell's book was like finding a missing piece for me, an intimate look into the lives of Knapp and Caldwell and the tremendous friendship they wove together through walks in the woods, long summer vacations together and countless hours on the phone. A friendship that close changes lives forever, but neither was prepared for what lie ahead.
It seemed perverse almost, that fate would tear these two souls apart and Caldwell chronicles her private suffering with unrelenting candor and despair. Not only could I see the hole in her heart, her brilliant storytelling allowed me to feel it to some degree. That's the mark of excellence in a good memoir. Let's Take the Long Way Home doesn't just tell a story. It takes us along for a walk in the woods and like Caldwell, at journey's end, we're never the same.
Highly recommended, esp. after reading Knapp's memoir.
I was consumed by Knapp's own memoir, Drinking: A Love Story many years ago. I remember reading of Knapp's death not long after that and feeling so pained by the fact that she had survived alcoholism only to be robbed of her life just a few years later. Caldwell's book was like finding a missing piece for me, an intimate look into the lives of Knapp and Caldwell and the tremendous friendship they wove together through walks in the woods, long summer vacations together and countless hours on the phone. A friendship that close changes lives forever, but neither was prepared for what lie ahead.
It seemed perverse almost, that fate would tear these two souls apart and Caldwell chronicles her private suffering with unrelenting candor and despair. Not only could I see the hole in her heart, her brilliant storytelling allowed me to feel it to some degree. That's the mark of excellence in a good memoir. Let's Take the Long Way Home doesn't just tell a story. It takes us along for a walk in the woods and like Caldwell, at journey's end, we're never the same.
Highly recommended, esp. after reading Knapp's memoir.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good buy
The book is in great shape and it arrived quickly. Only thing is that there was some dirt on the cover that could have been washed off.
Published 2 days ago by P. Morgan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forever Friends
The authors style of writing drew me into her memories so profoundly I felt I was accompanying her in the corridors of her beautiful, painful, magical, exciting memories. Read more
Published 26 days ago by Becki Hawkins
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Good
I enjoyed the book once I got past the slow start. This book was one of my book club selections. Most club members rated it higher than I did. I have trouble with slow starts.
Published 1 month ago by slabbe
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Let's Take the Long Way Home
This is a wonderful book! The writer's style is honest and intimate; it's like looking deeply into the hearts of two very special friends. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kate
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Glimpse into Catharsis
I felt as if I was reading someone's therapy journal of insights and healing over the course of a friendship. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Nancy S .Libefrtini
4.0 out of 5 stars
Loving -dogs and friends
As a dog lover , I understand the depth of her love for Clemontine. I wish I had a girlfriend relationship that was as deep and close as theirs was.
Published 2 months ago by Multiple mustang owner
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely Book
This is simply the best book about friendship that I've ever read. I suggested it to my book club as a companion to Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Beth C Anderson
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not my favorite book.
The book is well-written. I'm sure it helped the author through her mourning period. Had I not been reading it for my book club, I would not have read this book. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Nancy Hagen
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic memoir on friendship, grief
This book has stayed me long after I put it down. The writing was excellent and the many threads of the story encompassing introverts, alcoholism, friends, grief and dogs allowed... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Leslie
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful
Well, let's see. I started this book less than 24 hours ago and I just finished it. It is a gorgeous book. Read more
Published 4 months ago by I. M. O'neil
