Getting Out
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A young woman resisting the demands of her dependent family seeks escape in an increasingly dangerous outdoor adventure.
When Hannah Blue joins the Adventurer's Club, she pictures campfires and star-filled nights. And she imagines a temporary respite from the ever-present shadow of her parents' divorce, her siblings' inability to cope in the real world without her vigilance, and her boyfriend, Ben, who, it seems, is looking for a commitment. Most of all, she needs a break from the irresistible pull of her father, whose unpredictable moods and imaginary health scares have always kept him at the center of the family universe.
But when her father's latest illness turns out to be real, Hannah finds herself growing addicted to the freedom she finds in the silty caves deep beneath the sunlit woods, on the crevasses accessible only with crampons and ice axes. It's as if she feels more herself when she's outside -- until she realizes that the people she keeps leaving may not always wait for her to come back.
Featuring an appealing, spirited heroine and vivid outdoor settings, Getting Out surpasses the stylistic and storytelling promise displayed in Gwendolen Gross's first novel, Field Guide, and yields a fresh look at the high stakes of love's many expectations.
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Hannah Blue feels trapped. Her Boston design agency job is unimaginative, her boyfriend wants to move in and her family is too needy. After a particularly demeaning encounter with her boss at the start of this creaky drama, Hannah happens upon her colleague Linda's entrancing vacation photographs and garners herself an invitation to a meeting of Linda's Adventurers' Club. So begins Hannah's obsession with the outdoors, the grueling hikes and punishing climbs providing a setting in which she is able to bond with new people while contemplating the direction her life is taking. Gross (author of the well-received Field Guide) is a competent writer, and Hannah's journey to self-discovery is in parts funny, touching and exhilarating. Boyfriend Ben, a museum curator, defies stereotype by being short (five foot six) and unafraid of commitment; Hannah's family members are equally unorthodox, though not fleshed out quite as well. As family problems mount her father has lupus, her brother and his wife are splitting up Hannah flees her increasingly chaotic life and goes on a solo expedition in the New Hampshire woods, which forces her to make some tough evaluations of her recent behavior and decide what it is she really wants. Her final decision has been obvious from the outset of the novel, which wouldn't be such a drawback if Gross's prose had more to offer than solid narrative, but the occasional attempts at stylistic flourishes ("sun spilled inside his lips") feel forced. Still, this is a capable performance, of particular interest to lovelorn hiking aficionados.
