Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the story of friendship, love and loss and we feel all of it as Caldwell takes us along in this well written memoir.
We know early on that Caldwell loses her best friend, Catherine Knapp, to cancer, but first we must learn about the tenor of their friendship to understand what comes at the end - the loss of a most important friendship, the person who just "got" her.
Two introverted writers, Caldwell and Knapp met and built a friendship because of their dogs. Taking long walks lead to deep conversations and mutual reliance. Throughout the first half of the book, Caldwell sets out to explain how they became friends, what that meant and how their similarities, including both of their struggles with alcoholism, bonded them together.
In the middle I found myself a little bored with Caldwell's recount of her struggles with alcoholism. Knapp had written about hers in Drinking: A Love Story, so I thought that maybe Caldwell felt the need to share her own experience. But later, I realized it was to show how deeply these two women were able to understand and accept each other.
By the end of the book, as Caroline is diagnosed with cancer, begins treatment and a willful battle, I was in tears. Caldwell reminds us all what a precious gift friendship is and how terrible it is to imagine (and read about someone else) losing it.
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