![]() ![]() Initially, we meet the petite Irene Bobs, a spunkily irrepressible young woman married to the equally diminutive Titch. The novel is told in alternating first-person voices. Then something changed: “You can’t be a white Australian writer and spend your whole life ignoring the greatest, most important aspect of our history, and that is that we – I – have been the beneficiaries of a genocide.” ![]() In a recent interview in the Australian, he said that he’d always felt that it was not the place of a white writer to tell this tale. It seems strange at first that Carey – surely Australia’s greatest living novelist, even if he hasn’t dwelled there for decades – has taken so long to get around to the subject. Then there’s Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill, whose concluding revelation about one of the characters’ racial identities does what all good end-of-book twists ought to, shedding new light on the entire novel.Ī Long Way from Home, Peter Carey’s 14th novel, uses the story of a light-skinned Indigenous Australian who has been brought up white to address the country’s brutal history of racism. More recently, we’ve had Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, in which the African American Coleman Silk attempts to pass for a Jewish academic. Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, Passing, is a near-forgotten classic, telling of two mixed-race women, Clare and Irene, who identify as white and black respectively. It shouldn’t surprise, then, that racial passing has such a rich literary history. Time magazine states that it is "eartbreaking but never maudlin" and "a testament to the power and beauty of mature friendship." Gail Caldwell won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2001 for her writing at the Boston Globe.W riters are by nature chameleons, with each new character a new disguise to take on, a fresh skin to inhabit. ![]() It was named one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2010 by Time magazine, The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, and many others. Let's Take the Long Way Home: a memoir of friendship won the New England Book Award in 2010. Finding Caroline was like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you could have conceived." The growth of their friendship, the strength of their bond, the tragedy of Caroline's short fight against lung cancer and the grief beyond are all detailed. "Apart, we had each been frightened drunks and single women and dog lovers together, we became a small corporation. They were introduced by a dog walker who recognized their many similarities and they began "walking their puppies" together in the woods. The book opens "It's an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that too.” The connection between these women was charged from the beginning. The title refers to their habit of taking the long way home so that they could continue their conversations. Let's Take the Long Way Home was published in 2010. The memoir describes the friendship between the author and fellow writer Caroline Knapp who died at the age of 42 in 2002, and it takes place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Let's Take the Long Way Home: a memoir of friendship is a memoir by Gail Caldwell (1951–).
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