Eat Only When You're Hungry by Lindsay Hunter
I actually liked this book a lot (caveat: until the end, which I kind of wish had happened one chapter sooner than it did). I love a good road trip and our "hero" was road tripping from page one.
Quick cinopsis (nod here to Hrishi and his "hrinopsis" on WWW): Late middle aged man with addict son heads out in an RV to meet up with his ex and try to find their missing child. It was funny and quirky and I am just enough short of his middle age age to find all of his laments about his slowly failing body relateable but not quite personally applicable (yet).
While driving, Greg reflects on his childhood, his relationship with his ex-wife, his love for his wife, his interactions with his son and other aspects of his life. Hunter does a great job bringing Greg's feelings to life and lending poignancy to his reflections, as in here where he recalls the feelings he got when his friends' moms would be nice to him: "Most of him was on guard, calculating his responses. But a small part of him was touched, genuinely touched, his throat closing a little and his face wanting to crumble. What was that? They accepted him. He was one of them. He wouldn't be alone forever."
On his son who is now around 30, well into his adulthood but still carrying the mantle of youthful ignorance of how to "adult" around with him: "Still, when he thought of GJ he thought of a boy, or a young man. Not the father-aged adult mess that he seemed to be now."
And Hunter startled me with laugh out loud funny lines every now and then: "Deb never nagged him about his weight, but sometimes he felt like she challenged him in other ways. They call it a compact, she'd said about the RV. Might as well have said, Good luck, fatty."
However, Hunter also lands a line like this: "He leaned over and folded back the navy blind to watch them heave themselves into and out of the parking spots, honking hellos and goodbyes, leviathans of the rain in this middle of nowhere." But then she turned around and used the word "leviathan" again a couple of pages later which sort of took the wind out from under what I otherwise thought was pretty clever.
I don't usually translate books into movies in my head but this is one that I could see being an entertaining dramady with the right actors and the right script. Not gonna lie, even the best adaptation would not be winning any Academy Awards but a mid-range performance at the box office and a hit on Netflix? I can see it.
I noted a myriad of other quotes, which in a short book like this (only 191 pages) is actually pretty impressive. Its hard to explain but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book while not being quite sure that in the final analysis the book was all that great.
Other quoteable quotes:
It felt like a gift, this possibility that GJ was just being an asshole again.
Greg had slowed down and pulled over, he realized, partly in the spirit of he trip, the one that let him meander and reflect and that would lead him directly to his son. A hero's journey.
Because its like you can be alone without being lonely.
"'Oh', Greg said. Sometimes he felt grateful such a word existed, a small breathe of a word, a pebble, really, but one that didn't tether him to anything. Oh.
All that said, I have complained before about the toll the unreliable narrator takes on me as a reader and in this book, I would have preferred to keep it honest. I'm not going to ruin the book by pointing out what he was dishonest about and I will say that it did not make me dislike the rest of the book, but it was odd and oddly placed in the story and I am not sure what the author was trying to achieve. Usually, there is a reason which kind of pulls everything together even if you don't like it. Here, it just struck me as dumb. And also, upon reflection, the book felt a bit like Bryson's A Walk in the Woods which I also enjoyed. I suppose the comparison may be inevitable between two books where older dudes go on a quest of some kind?
Rating: Somewhere between #3 and #4...I both Liked It and Enjoyed It Very Much.
Quick cinopsis (nod here to Hrishi and his "hrinopsis" on WWW): Late middle aged man with addict son heads out in an RV to meet up with his ex and try to find their missing child. It was funny and quirky and I am just enough short of his middle age age to find all of his laments about his slowly failing body relateable but not quite personally applicable (yet).
While driving, Greg reflects on his childhood, his relationship with his ex-wife, his love for his wife, his interactions with his son and other aspects of his life. Hunter does a great job bringing Greg's feelings to life and lending poignancy to his reflections, as in here where he recalls the feelings he got when his friends' moms would be nice to him: "Most of him was on guard, calculating his responses. But a small part of him was touched, genuinely touched, his throat closing a little and his face wanting to crumble. What was that? They accepted him. He was one of them. He wouldn't be alone forever."
On his son who is now around 30, well into his adulthood but still carrying the mantle of youthful ignorance of how to "adult" around with him: "Still, when he thought of GJ he thought of a boy, or a young man. Not the father-aged adult mess that he seemed to be now."
And Hunter startled me with laugh out loud funny lines every now and then: "Deb never nagged him about his weight, but sometimes he felt like she challenged him in other ways. They call it a compact, she'd said about the RV. Might as well have said, Good luck, fatty."
However, Hunter also lands a line like this: "He leaned over and folded back the navy blind to watch them heave themselves into and out of the parking spots, honking hellos and goodbyes, leviathans of the rain in this middle of nowhere." But then she turned around and used the word "leviathan" again a couple of pages later which sort of took the wind out from under what I otherwise thought was pretty clever.
I don't usually translate books into movies in my head but this is one that I could see being an entertaining dramady with the right actors and the right script. Not gonna lie, even the best adaptation would not be winning any Academy Awards but a mid-range performance at the box office and a hit on Netflix? I can see it.
I noted a myriad of other quotes, which in a short book like this (only 191 pages) is actually pretty impressive. Its hard to explain but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book while not being quite sure that in the final analysis the book was all that great.
Other quoteable quotes:
It felt like a gift, this possibility that GJ was just being an asshole again.
Greg had slowed down and pulled over, he realized, partly in the spirit of he trip, the one that let him meander and reflect and that would lead him directly to his son. A hero's journey.
Because its like you can be alone without being lonely.
"'Oh', Greg said. Sometimes he felt grateful such a word existed, a small breathe of a word, a pebble, really, but one that didn't tether him to anything. Oh.
All that said, I have complained before about the toll the unreliable narrator takes on me as a reader and in this book, I would have preferred to keep it honest. I'm not going to ruin the book by pointing out what he was dishonest about and I will say that it did not make me dislike the rest of the book, but it was odd and oddly placed in the story and I am not sure what the author was trying to achieve. Usually, there is a reason which kind of pulls everything together even if you don't like it. Here, it just struck me as dumb. And also, upon reflection, the book felt a bit like Bryson's A Walk in the Woods which I also enjoyed. I suppose the comparison may be inevitable between two books where older dudes go on a quest of some kind?
Rating: Somewhere between #3 and #4...I both Liked It and Enjoyed It Very Much.
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