Waiting on Wednesday (6)

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.



Basically, I pick a book I'm excited about that's coming out sometime soon.

Waiting on Wednesday two whole weeks in a row! I guess there are lots of upcoming books I'm excited about, what can I say? This week's pick is:


Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell

Publication Date: August 10, 2010
Publisher:Random House

“It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.” Who needs a summary when you have this blurb? It's enough to make me wish I could run out and buy the book right now! But because I'm nice, I'll give you the summary as well.

Summary: In Let’s Take the Long Walk Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gail Caldwell has written a powerful and moving memoir about her coming-of-age in mid-life, and her extraordinary friendship with the author of Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp—fellow writers, AA members, dog lovers, and observers of life.

In her younger years, Caldwell defined herself by rebellion and independence, a passion for books, and an aversion to intimacy and a distrust of others. Then while living in Cambridge in her early 1940s, “an age when the view from the hill can be clear and poignant both,” Caldwell adopts a rambunctious puppy named Clementine. On one of their bucolic walks, she meets Caroline and her dog, Lucille, and both women’s lives change forever.

Though they are more different than alike, these two fiercely private, independent women quickly relax into a friendship more profound than either of them expected, a friendship that will thrive on their shared secrets, including parallel struggles with alcoholism and loneliness. They grow increasingly inseparable until, in 2003, Caroline is diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Caldwell writes: “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.”

In her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion and grief in this wise and affecting account about losing her best friend. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is also a celebration of life and all the little moments worth cherishing—and affirms why Gail Caldwell is rightly praised as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.