From Publishers Weekly
Hannah Blue feels trapped. Her Boston design agency job is unimaginative, her boyfriend wants to move in and her family is too needy. After a particularly demeaning encounter with her boss at the start of this creaky drama, Hannah happens upon her colleague Linda's entrancing vacation photographs and garners herself an invitation to a meeting of Linda's Adventurers' Club. So begins Hannah's obsession with the outdoors, the grueling hikes and punishing climbs providing a setting in which she is able to bond with new people while contemplating the direction her life is taking. Gross (author of the well-received Field Guide) is a competent writer, and Hannah's journey to self-discovery is in parts funny, touching and exhilarating. Boyfriend Ben, a museum curator, defies stereotype by being short (five foot six) and unafraid of commitment; Hannah's family members are equally unorthodox, though not fleshed out quite as well. As family problems mount her father has lupus, her brother and his wife are splitting up Hannah flees her increasingly chaotic life and goes on a solo expedition in the New Hampshire woods, which forces her to make some tough evaluations of her recent behavior and decide what it is she really wants. Her final decision has been obvious from the outset of the novel, which wouldn't be such a drawback if Gross's prose had more to offer than solid narrative, but the occasional attempts at stylistic flourishes ("sun spilled inside his lips") feel forced. Still, this is a capable performance, of particular interest to lovelorn hiking aficionados.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Gross' second novel opens with heroine Hannah Blue's first trip with a local outdoors group, the Adventurers' Club. She can barely keep up with the others in the group, and she's never been so sore, but as soon as it's over, she's dying to go again. Her boyfriend, Ben, doesn't understand why she's so drawn to the wilderness and, consequently, spends so much time away from him. Hannah's quirky family is a lot to handle as well: her brother, Ted, and his pregnant wife are getting divorced; her 21-year-old sister, Marla, might be getting married; and her father is once again claiming to have a chronic, and this time fatal, illness. Unable and unwilling to deal with her family, and concerned that Ben wants more than she can give, Hannah spends more and more time going on trips with the Adventurers' Club. Hannah must ultimately decide whether to pull away from her family and Ben or balance them with her new interests in this winning novel from the author of
Field Guide (2001).
Kristine HuntleyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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