And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

Product Information

They never stopped arguing and they never slept apart; he spent an entire working life calculating probabilities and she was the most improbable person he ever met. There's a hospital room at the end of a life where someone, right in the middle of the floor, has pitched a green tent. A person wakes up inside it, breathless and afraid, not knowing where he is. A young man sitting next to him whispers:

NetGalley and Atria Books provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available! He always wants to know everything about school, but not like other adults, who only want to know if Noah is behaving. Grandpa wants to know if school is behaving.But everyone who ISN’T the single most beautiful living person or a charming Scandinavian author, NAVIGATE AWAY RIGHT NOW.

i know that the way home is getting longer and longer every morning. but i loved you because your brain, your world, was always bigger than everyone else’s. there’s still a lot of it left.” It hurts less and less. That's one good thing about forgetting things. You forget the things that hurt too.'And for me it even starts out confusing. What is the setting? There’s a hospital room, with a green tent pitched on the floor, with a young man sitting next to grandpa. I’m assuming that the tent is only in the imagination of the grandpa and probably the young man there is his son, not his grandson? Then in the next paragraph, the grandpa and grandson Noah are on a bench, which is surrounded by items from the past, like a desk and a calculator. Is this scene in the present, and also just in grandpa’s mind? Is this a conglomerate of memories? Then there’s a lake, where they have been in a boat and where grandpa has hit his head. I’m trying to figure out if the story is all taking place on the bench, at the lake, or in the hospital room (where there’s an imaginary tent). And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer is a beautiful story of the very special relationship between Noah and Grandpa. Grandpa has dementia and is struggling to simultaneously hold onto his memories and prepare Noah for what is to come.

Isn't it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it's just children and old people who laugh". Oh this book is really good, and I am serious here, believe it or not. Rich, poetic language, huge emotional connections between the characters, and very wise sentences. I have to give you a few examples so you can see the beauty for yourself: Grandparents. Grandchildren. The special bond they have, with none of the rules associated with your parents, none of the burden of knowing you failed to be the child they wanted you to be. The special role they have in a child’s life, the things they learn – from one another. Isn’t that the best time of all life’s ages, and old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild. When a boy is just big enough to know how the world works, but still young enough to refuse to accept it.

This is a story about memories and about letting go. It’s a love letter and a slow farewell between a man and his grandson, and between a dad and his boy. I can't rank it, because it didn't feel like an audiobook. It felt like a spirit and a prayer and a heartache. Depending on where you are in your life it will either be perfect, poignant, or possibly fearful as you think about the loss of a loved one. Among Grandpa’s dwindling memories are those of his son Ted’s childhood and the little time he spent with him as a child. Regret and sadness dance in circles around Grandpa as he barely recognizes his own son, and sees him more a a child Noah’s age than the man he’s become. Ted too has regrets, for not having the chance to really know the father who was always too busy to spare him much attention, the father who now barely remembers him at all. Grandpa feels the urgency to help his beloved grandson understand what’s going on and prepare him for the goodbye. However, with his fleeting memory and mental capacities that are getting progressively weaker, this task becomes harder and harder every day. She stood in front of him with January in her hair and he was lost. She was the first person in his life that he couldn't work out, though he spent every minute of it after that day trying. “I always knew who I was with you. You were my shortcut,"