Take Me With You

Avevo letto già un libro di questa autrice e non mi aveva impressionato, carino ma nulla più. Questo invece è bello. Una storia delicata, un romanzo di formazione con due ragazzi,un anziano professore, un padre insufficiente, una ex moglie en passant, il fantasma di un figlio e infine un cane. Il tutto ambientati nei principali parchi nazionali degli Usa, letteralmente on the road.
Piuttosto ben scritto, carico di buoni sentimenti anche se a volte un po' intrecciati ed arzigogolati, narra di seconde occasioni perse o sfruttate, di lutto, di alcolismo, di figli, di paure... mescola tutto come in un frullatore ma l'insieme intrattiene e fa riflettere in modo piacevole.
Ognuno dei personaggi ha la possibilità di capire i proprio errori show more e anche cosa vuole davvero dalla vita. Alcuni ci riescono, altri rimangono prigionieri delle proprie schiavitù interiori. Ma la possibilità di cambiare arriva per tutti e va saputa cogliere.
E lo spunto per coglierla resta legato comunque all'essere famiglia, comunità, allo stare insieme. In particolare il cibo, anche banali panini, consumano insieme diviene altro. Il lutto si trasfigura in una nuova paternità, e la figliolanza diventa a sua volta un prendersi cura.
Perché, come di recente commentato a proposito del film gaelico "The Quiet Girl", a volte la svolta sta in pochi settimane o mesi con una persona o una famiglia che ti fa conoscere un modo diverso di vivere, e così facendo ti salva letteralmente lo spirito dall'abbrutimento, dalla semplice animalità del soddisfare i bisogni fisici.
Proprii per questo è un ottimo testo per adolescenti/quasi adulti. show less

August Schroeder is on his way to Yosemite. He is taking a trip he had planned with his son, Philip, but Philip is not along for the trip because he was killed in a traffic accident. When his car breaks down in a town along the way, he is persuaded to take two young boys (12 and 7), Seth and Henry, along with him on his summer trip. It is a fortuitous trip for both August and the boys, and it changes them in ways they cannot anticipate. They all need saving, and they save each other, and it is the building of their relationships and the influences they exert upon one another that make this a poignant and meaningful story.

This is my second Hyde book and I liked this one even more than the first. Hyde has a way of telling a story that show more makes you just relax into it and go along on the journey. You feel that you are always moving toward something important, something that matters not only to the characters but to all of us. I cried and laughed during this read, and I felt at the end that August and Seth and Henry were all made of flesh and blood and that I knew them well. show less

This is a great book to read at the end of vacation, or even during your vacation. When I finished Take Me with You I felt like I’d been reliving my childhood summer vacations; but aside from the nostalgia this story invokes, it is a superbly crafted tale about 2 men and 2 boys and the way the decisions they make change the course of all their lives.

August Schroeder is a sober recovering alcoholic and a science teacher on summer break, who is driving his camper, and his dog Woody, to Yosemite, something he does every year; only this year is different because he is taking the ashes of his 19 year old son with him—wanting to scatter them when he gets to Yosemite. That’s the plan, until he breaks down in a desolate part of show more California and a mechanic tows him to his shop. Wes, the mechanic, has two sons, who like playing with Woody, and the dog likes them too, giving the bored kids something to do. Their dad notices that they all seem to get along well, and after a few days he asks August if he would take the boys on vacation with him for the summer. At first August is taken aback, but as he learns more about Wes’s reason for asking, he says he’ll think about it—and so will you as you contemplate what would compel a stranger to take 2 children he barely knows on a 3 month vacation? Take Me with You, is a 5 star novel that can be read by anyone including older teens. There is a small amount of swearing used by the kids, a few times, in understandable circumstances. show less

I am giving this book a high rating despite myself in some ways. Totally heart felt, tear-jerker book about a man who adopts two boys for the summer and takes them on a road trip to our national parks to get away from their alcoholic father who is going to prison. It felt like an Oprah book at it's best. Great description of alcoholism. all written with an open heart.

I LOVED this! The audio was wonderful, read by Jeff Cummings. I was almost in tears at different points along the way. And what's not to just plain love about these three people, August and the two boys AND Woody, the dog. I thought the entire story was believable in a really lovely way---a man who was set in his ways but learning to adapt to a younger generation as well as to his own body. Lots of words of wisdom in both directions---from the young to the old and the old to the young. Well worth reading or listening.

I agree with others – the first half was great, the second half not so much. Very interesting premise: an alcoholic, about to go to jail, asks a stranger who’s also an alcoholic, to take his two sons on a summer-long road trip so they don’t have to go into foster care. I loved the boys, with their philosophical outlook on life and quiet wisdom. Young Henry is especially endearing because of his tendency not to speak, until he begins bonding with August and later feels the need to defend himself, his brother, and August from his father. The way the boys help August deal with the death of his son was really touching; almost brought a tear to my eye. The author does a great job of describing the beauty and majesty of the parks and show more sites that they visited; she also skillfully handles the subject of alcoholism and the positive effect that AA can have on the addicted and those affected by addiction. It’s when the boys and August reconnect after eight (!) years that the story falls short. Way too much rock climbing; way too contrived with August’s sudden disability; not enough reality about cross-country trips once the boys are adults with their own lives and families. It almost felt like two different books. A little more story-telling about the intervening years might have improved things. show less

Catherine Ryan Hyde’s Take Me with You (2014) reminds me very much of her When I Found You, a novel I read back in 2008. In both instances, a man has his life turned upside down by children who randomly come into his life. In Take Me with You, the main character encounters the two young sons of the small-town mechanic he’s hired to get his travel rig back on the road, and in When I Found You, a man finds a small baby that’s been abandoned in a field he is walking across on his way to hunt ducks. In both novels, the men have to deal with unreliable relatives of the children who resent the long term relationships that will develop between the men and the children. It should be noted, however, that Take Me with You does have a much show more more positive tone and ending than When I Found You.

August, a high school science teacher on a tight travel budget, is on his way to Yellowstone National Park when his rig breaks down in a small California town, and now it appears that the repair costs are going to eat up all of his allocated gas money and then some. For very personal reasons, August is desperate to get to Yellowstone, but now it looks as if he is going to have to try again next year. And then it happens: the mechanic, who is about to begin a 90-day DUI jail sentence, offers to do the repairs for free if only August will take his two boys along with him and keep them until school starts again in September. August knows there are all kinds of reasons that he can’t — and shouldn’t — even seriously consider what the man is asking him to do. But when he drives away, the boys are with him.

On the road, August learns that the boys, aged 12 and 7, have been emotionally damaged by living alone for the past few years with their alcoholic father. In their own way, the boys are as damaged and fragile as August, himself a recovering alcoholic and newly divorced, knows himself to be. An entire summer of life on the road together will not be easy for any of them, but it will end up being the defining moment in each of their lives despite their reluctance to admit it to themselves or, most difficultly, to each other.

Bottom Line: Take Me with You strikes me as a novel whose message is that life is only made more difficult, and more precious time wasted, when good people fail to communicate with each other out of a misplaced fear of offending each other. This is, in effect, as much a coming of age novel for August as it is for the two boys for whom he suddenly finds himself totally responsible. Hyde tells a good, satisfying store here despite the fact that I found myself sometimes wishing I could shake a couple of the main characters by the shoulder and tell them to just get on with it. show less