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A refreshing look at a woman grappling with the real world
Book Review
By Derryll White
White, Randy Wayne (2012). Gone.
I haven’t read much of Randy White, but enough so that when I saw he was creating a major new character I had to have a look at this book.
Hannah Smith is 31, a commercial fishing guide, and someone who is finally coming into her own mind, person and body. High school was a disaster of awkwardness, acne and angst. But now she is coming to terms with late-emerging beauty and a willfulness of mind earned through the trials of her earlier years.
Forty pages into the novel I like her because she seems real, someone who is coming to know herself and is requiring others to deal with her on her terms. She is not tied to any man, runs her own business and has strong ties with her family – my kind of woman.
The action is a little hackneyed, and not quite as believable. All-in-all, however, ‘Gone’ is a quick read and an exposure to a world of boating and life in the Florida Keys. It is far from Cranbrook and the mountains of East Kootenay.
Hannah Smith is a refreshing look at an independent young woman grappling with the evils and embellishments of a real world.
White doesn’t offer much of a social commentary. The language is not compelling, but the book was enjoyable.
Excerpts from the novel:
PIVOTAL – Considering all that happened afterward, good and bad, I have no reason to regret beating that storm. But it has made me fretful about how one small event – something as common as lightning and heavy rain – can change a person’s life in ways so big, there is no hope of returning. Only hope for what comes next.
REALIZATION – One thing I’ve learned is, don’t argue with the truth on those scarce occasions when you’re lucky enough to know what the truth is.
PAST – It’s not that I felt better about my past. I didn’t – not on a daily basis, anyway. I was just weary of the life I’d lived with my mother, eager to shed the past as cleanly as some creatures can shed their skins. It’s not that easy, of course, but it is doable – or so I’ve convinced myself. All I know for sure is, the only way to leave something behind is to keep moving ahead.
PERSONAL GROWTH – Some of us mature and blaze early in life. Others take longer to grow into the person they are meant to be. I bloomed very late which, in truth, has surprised no one more than me. Maybe my brain will never fully replace the person I used to be with the woman I’ve become because, like a lot of people, I grew up feeling lonely and unattractive and that’s the person I wake up with every morning.
PRIVATE – What’s private in a person’s head isn’t like seeing them step out of a shower. It’s the sort of nakedness that can’t ever be covered once it has been revealed.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
