{"id":5564,"date":"2015-11-23T12:13:04","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T12:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5564"},"modified":"2015-12-02T13:01:39","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T13:01:39","slug":"etta-and-otto-and-russell-and-james-by-emma-hooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5564","title":{"rendered":"Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Fig Tree UK, Simon & Schuster US <\/strong><\/p>\n

288pp, hardback, \u00a312.99\/$26<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Some months earlier, she had started getting pulled into Otto\u2019s dreams instead of her own at night.\u00a0 She would be pulled right in and would be there, in water, in trousers, standing on a grey beach with blood lapping up to her knees and men all around yelling and she would be there, sometimes with a spoon or a towel in her hand and sometimes with nothing.\u00a0 Night after night.\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

This is above all a tender story, with the wonderful Vogel family and their fifteen children at its heart : \u2018You didn\u2019t bother parents with child-problems unless there was blood or it involved an animal.\u2019<\/p>\n

Otto Vogel is one of the fifteen.\u00a0 His friend Russell attached himself to the family as a child, and was lamed in an accident.\u00a0 They grow up and go to school together, and there meet Otto\u2019s future wife, Etta, a young school-teacher straight from training college, who befriends both of them.\u00a0 Russell falls in love with her too.<\/p>\n

The novel begins with Etta\u2019s unscheduled departure from her marital home in Saskatchewan, rural Canada, at the age of 82.\u00a0 She has decided to walk 2000 miles to the ocean, which she has never seen.\u00a0 Her reason for leaving is that she cannot bear what Otto suffered during WWII, experiences which she is living through in her dreams.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a tone reminiscent of Carol Shields\u2019s much-loved novel The Stone Diaries\u00a0 –\u00a0 <\/em>and, in one remarkable passage, of Ann Michaels\u2019s searing Holocaust novel Fugitive Pieces\u00a0 <\/em>–\u00a0 the young, Canadian-born but UK-resident author and musician Emma Hooper binds together the story of her characters\u2019 childhood, wartime experiences and adulthood in a plaited narrative that makes everything simultaneously immediate.\u00a0 The effect is incredibly touching.<\/p>\n

The boys make clandestine visits to Russell\u2019s aunt and uncle\u2019s farm, to listen to wartime broadcasts, which are banned at the Vogel home.\u00a0 As soon as he is old enough, Otto enlists.\u00a0 Russell is rejected, because of his disability. Otto leaves to join the Canadian army, asking Etta to correspond with him, so that he can practise writing:\u00a0 this is how they fall in love. \u00a0Years later, while Etta walks across Canada to the sea, they correspond again. \u00a0All this time, Russell has loved Etta.\u00a0 In time, he sets out to follow her.<\/p>\n

Etta, meanwhile, has picked up a companion along the way:\u00a0 a faithful coyote whom she names James, after an unborn child.\u00a0 Entirely believably, she survives on her wits and wilderness-wisdom, unaware initially that her trek has attracted nationwide attention and admiration.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t give away the ending.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that this glorious novel shows love of many kinds, including the parental and the uxorious, and is filled with common, homely touches, from the farmland to the kitchen to the schoolroom to the dancehall to the battlefield and the marriage bed.\u00a0 One to read and re-read and tell your friends about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

* A 2015 Notable Book<\/p>\n

In a tone reminiscent of Carol Shields\u2019s much-loved novel The Stone Diaries<\/em> – and, in one remarkable passage, of Ann Michaels\u2019s searing Holocaust novel Fugitive Pieces<\/em> – the young, Canadian-born but UK-resident author and musician Emma Hooper binds together the story of her characters\u2019 childhood, wartime experiences and adulthood in a plaited narrative that makes everything simultaneously immediate. The effect is incredibly touching […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5564"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6399,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5564\/revisions\/6399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}