Idaho
By Emily Ruskovich
305 pages
This novel is almost too complicated to describe- it is certainly too complicated to describe well…..
Ann and Wade are married and living in the mountains of Idaho. Wade is struggling with dementia. As Wade’s memory fades, Ann finds herself wondering more and more about Wade’s first family. What really happened on that fateful day that tore Wade and his family apart?
What did I think?
WOW! This is already on my favorites for 2017! This haunting novel is told with such beauty and insight. It is about so many different aspects of our human experience. Loss, memory, healing, forgiveness, redemption, friendship, how we give love and how that experience changes us. It is complicated and does not wrap the story into a neat little package, but isn’t that true of life as well?
Should you read it?
Absolutely! With sentences such as, “Ann thinks of what Wade told her years ago, about fawns being invisible to the noses of predators. She watches the fawn walk, nibbling the grass, and she thinks: It leaves no trail. It is safe from the danger of its history.” How could this possibly be a first time novelist?
Quote-
“Because Wade had thrown everything away- drawings, clothes, toys- each accidental remnant loomed in Ann’s mind with unspeakable importance. Four moldy dolls buried in the sawdust of a rotten stump. A high-heeled Barbie shoe that fell from the drainpipe. A neon toothbrush in a doghouse. Then, finally, the half-finished drawing book. Artifacts heavy with importance they didn’t deserve, but which they took on because of their frightening scarcity; they built up against her, making stories of themselves, memories inside her head that should have remained in Wade’s.”
