And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer Book Review
“‘We had too little time,’ he says.
She shakes her head.
’We had an eternity. Children and grandchildren.’
’I only had you for the blink of an eye,’ he says.
She laughs.
’You had me an entire lifetime. All of mine.’
’That wasn’t enough.’”
I love a good short story. As a writer myself, I marvel at the ability to construct a fully fleshed out story in such few pages. While I can’t say that I’m a Backman super fan like others, I can say that he knocks it out of the park with this one.
This novella is a beautifully written story about a grandfather navigating the loss of his memories and his family’s attempt at navigate the loss of a patriarch they once knew. We walk alongside this grandfather as he frantically tries to hold tightly to his memories of his life long love story, of two imperfect people who fell in love young and chose each other, over and over again.
I watched my own high school sweatheart weep while reading this novella and rather than spoiling anything for me, he pressed it into my hands instead.
You know that feeling when you see yourself so perfectly etched between the pages of a book? Or maybe if you’re not a reader, that feeling when you see yourself so perfectly portrayed in a TV or movie character? When you can’t understand how someone else, someone that doesn’t even know you, can so accurately describe how you think and what you feel? That is what Backman and this novella did for me. I truly can’t accurately describe what it means to me.
“‘We lived an extraordinarily ordinary life.’
’And ordinarily extraordinary life.’”
Do you ever have those moments, when you’re so far out of your own body, out of your own head and just dreaming, just thinking deeply about what it all means? When we strip away the layers of our lives: our jobs, our stuff, our feelings, our worries, we’re left with our relationships and in the end, that’s all that really matters. How deeply we’ve loved and been loved.
All I can say is this, this book will live on my shelves forever and I will recommend it far and wide.
