Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


"I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. Sometimes I think that the pain is what yields the solution. Grief and memory create their own narrative..." (p. 182)



A wonderful story of friendship and love.



I have to admit that I almost abandoned this book. At the beginning it seemed to perfect... her friendship, the connection they had over their alcoholism. The author's friend, Caroline, had written a book about her struggle with alcohol and I felt for the first 100 pages or so... that the author, Gail, was competing with her friend's story. But then, the story took on a "truthfulness" to me. It became authentic when she began to describe her friends illness and death and then the death of her beloved dog.



The truths she writes in the 2nd half of the book were heartfelt and filled with deep meaning.



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