Books of the week

THE GREAT ALONE KRISTIN HANNAH MACMILLAN, $35

American author Kristin Hannah’s recent novel, The Nightingale is not only a New York Times bestseller, but has been turned into a movie due for release early next year. It’s easy to see why it’s enjoyed literary success and adaptation to the big screen. Set during World War II, it tells of two French sisters’ fraught survivals during German occupation of their country. There is something, at once, epic, fierce, visual and accessible about the work.

Hannah’s latest, The Great Alone shares all of

The Nightingale’s strengths. No surprise that it has spent the past month firmly ensconced at the top of the NYT book charts, too.

The plot focuses upon 13-year-old Leonora Allbright whose itinerant existence goes into overdrive when her Vietnam veteran father Ernt inherits a remote Alaskan section and determines to relocate his family there. Has he or anyone else close to him ever visited their new home? No, but it’s 1974 – a year of immense turbulence and unrest symbolised by Watergate indictments, President Nixon’s resignation and Patty Hearst’s kidnapping, and he’s keen to escape what he sees as humanity’s inevitable self-destruction – so move the Allbrights do.

Amid all unsettlement, there’s always enlightenment. Hannah’s character “Leni” perfectly symbolises this. Her life is already one of perpetual upheaval, her tender age and consequent naivety normalising the psychotic roving in her father, something which has been going on for years. Her subsequent attendance at a series of schools across America has left her as isolated as her new homeland, Kaneq in Alaska.

Leni’s growing awareness of the troubles which beset her, such as her father’s mental instability and her mother’s martyrdom, enshrine The Great Alone as a classic bildungsroman or coming-of-age novel. Hannah sets us inside Leni’s head, attuned intuitively and psychologically to the deeply dark edges of her life. As Leni grows and as her eyes open, figuratively and literally, to her everyday and extraordinary predicaments, so too do our own.

Other characterisation here is pitch-perfect. From Mama Cora’s contradictory free-spirited, yet wifely docility to fiery Kaneq neighbour and store-owner, Large Marge, the cast is a vibrant medley of the incongruous and the credible.

Hannah’s painting of the rugged Alaskan landscape is equally nuanced. It is a place at once breathtaking and deadly, powerful yet easily yielding to the devastating forces of nature. As Leni grows into womanhood and becomes ever more embroiled in her familial dysfunctions, Kaneq’s seclusion and visible history make it the perfect setting for the drama which unfolds.

Rich in character, landscape, detail and action, Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone is an impressive read.