Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

"It's an old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too."

These opening lines from Gail Caldwell's memoir LET'S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME for some reason brought to mind the opening of Erich Segal's bestselling novel, LOVE STORY:

“What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.”

I know, I know. Caldwell's book is about a real life friendship between two women, and Segal's is a near smarmy sentimental piece of pop fiction, but you don't get to choose what pops into your head when you're reading.

Caldwell's book came out in 2010, and I remember reading about it at the time and wanting to show more read it, but didn't get around to it until now. I was interested in the book because I had read her friend Caroline Knapp's PACK OF TWO, a very moving memoir of how a dog helped her to cope with loneliness and a long recovery from anorexia and alcoholism. And I liked that one enough to read another Knapp book, a posthumous collection of her newspaper columns and essays called THE MERRY RECLUSE.

Caldwell is a good writer, but reading about loss and grief is never easy. However, the first half of LONG WAY HOME, with its loving and sometimes humorous descriptions of how the two met and how their friendship deepened, makes it a bit easier. New Englander Knapp and Texas-born Caldwell were both basically loners, devoted to their dogs and their writing, and to a small circle of close friends. Knapp had struggled with anorexia, Caldwell had polio as a child, and both were recovering alcoholics. Caldwell was a swimmer, Knapp a rower. So they had much in common, not to mention their beloved dogs, Lucille and Clementine - an added bonus for readers who are dog lovers.

This is a deeply felt story of how women bond. I was struck by this passage, feeling very much the outsider -

"'Men don't really understand women's friendships, do they?' I once asked my friend Louise, a writer who lived in Minnesota. 'Oh God, no,' she said. 'And we must never tell them.'"

And yet this book is perhaps one of the most heartfelt tellings of such a friendship that I have ever read.

It is the second half of the book that is so hard, so painful, the part that describes Knapp's final illness and death from cancer at the age of forty-two. In the last days Caldwell tells of wearing a T-shirt to the hospital with two of the first important commands learned in dog obedience classes printed on the back: SIT! STAY! And, she tells us, in those last days and final hours, "that was what I did. I sat and I stayed."

This is not a book you can blithely say, I really enjoyed it. The subject is too sad, too serious. But you can certainly learn something from it. And if you have ever lost someone you loved, human or canine, you will definitely relate.

Gail Caldwell has written a beautiful tribute to her dear friend, and to the joys and mysteries of a deep and true friendship. And maybe I wasn't so wrong after all in thinking of the Erich Segal book. Because LET'S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME is also a love story in the most elemental sense. Caroline would have been so pleased. Highly recommended. show less

I devoured this book in two evenings, hungry for such a literary and moving account of women's friendship. I only wish I would find the tale of that close connection among the living, rather than (as with Ann Patchett's "Truth and Beauty") only after one half of the dyad has passed away. Perhaps we are so busy living the joys and rigors of sisterhood that we don't write them.

At any rate, I recommend this book highly. Consider this passage, for instance: "The world appears with ferocious technicolor during crisis, and a decade later, I remember the visual arc of my body being airborne...But what I remember most was the territorial assault I felt, the indignation, while I was sailing through space. How dare you, the body and mind felt in show more furious accord. I'm in the middle of a life here. I was outraged because I had been working on this story line for years, and I knew it was not yet finished."

"Grief is what tells you who you are alone." This memoir lays bare the face of grief, and in seeing it, we feel less alone. show less

You'll need a box of Kleenex the size of Detroit to get through this this one. I'm finding that these memoirs that just tear your heart out and leave it in shreds on the floor are not all that enjoyable. But this one had a lot going for it. Two women, best friends, both recovering alcoholics, would walk their dogs together in the Cambridge outskirts and each convinced the other to take up their sport. So Gail took up Caroline's rowing and Caroline took up Gail's swimming laps. They had the kind of relationship where they would take the long way home so they could talk some more and then, when they got home they would call each other on the phone and talk even more. Real bosom buddies who truly enjoyed each others company. Until Caroline show more gets sick.

What makes this memoir different from some of the others I've read is the graceful way that Caldwell tells her story and the lilting, gorgeous prose that fills the narrative.

"It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur and epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part---time and space and the heart's weariness are the blander executioners of human connection." (Page 123)

We accompany her to AA meetings, to her therapy sessions, and through the horrific time as she sees her friend through her illness. She deals with the accompanying grief and loneliness with grace and honesty but it is so very hard.

"I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. Sometimes I think that the pain is what yields the solution. Grief and memory create their own narrative. This is the shining truth at the heart of Freud and Neruda and every war story ever told. The death mandates and gives rise to the story for the same reason that ancient tribes used to bury flowers with their dead. We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow. " (Page 182)

So, not for the faint-hearted. This is gritty, tough stuff. But beautifully written. I'm not even going to talk about the dog. show less

A story about death, dogs, and female friendship in New England. It's good to be reminded about the inevitability of death and the chance that it can come earlier and faster than we're ready for. I'm not quite so dog-oriented as the author, but I do know a couple and I can imagine that a pretty good person-canine relationship can develop. More interesting and producing a longer lasting personal response was the story of the relationship between two un-partnered women.

Gail Caldwell met fellow author Caroline Knapp through their mutual dog trainer and the two of them soon discovered that they were, in Anne of Green Gables parlance, kindred spirits. Their relationship wasn't just friendship, it defined the concept of best friend, that rare and precious ideal. This gorgeous and loving memoir is a tribute to that friendship and the terrible loss of it when Knapp, still so young, died of cancer.

Both Caldwell and Knapp were, as many writers are, solitary souls but each became for the other, a bright and safe light in the world of connection. They shared their hopes and dreams through the prism of everything they had in common--not just the writing but also their battles against alcoholism, their love of show more dogs, and their focus in life. Knapp taught Caldwell to scull and the two of them spent hours on the Charles River rowing together and going their own way. And this is perhaps an apt metaphor for their relationship. Each woman taught the other, they worked together, and they freely gave each other the space to go it alone, celebrating each others' individuality even as they pursued similar goals.

There are brief dips into both Caldwell and Knapp's pasts and the memoir isn't strictly chronological. It is more a free flowing meditation that captures something deeply precious and sadly ephemeral unconstrained by the mundane sense of time as a line. It is a record of Caldwell's heart laid bare for the reader, her gift to everyone who has missed out on knowing the amazing person who was her friend. It is grief-filled and poignantly accurate about the sucker punch that is loss. But ultimately it is a magnificent and beautifully written memoir that captures and records the friendship that is too special to let fade away with Knapp's death. show less

"A gorgeous, moving memoir about ... the author's own coming-of-age in midlife, as she learns to open herself to the power and healing of sharing her life with a best friend, Caroline Knapp -- a fellow writer, AA member, dog lover, and acute observer of life.

"Living in Cambridge in her early 40s, 'an age when the view from the hill can be clear and poignant both,' Caldwell adopts a rambunctious puppy named Clementine. On one of her buccolic walks, she meets Caroline and her dog Lucille, and both women's lives change forever. Though they are more different than alike, these two fiercely private, independent women quickly relax into a profound friendship, one that will thrive on their shared vulnerability, including parallel struggles show more with alcoholism and loneliness. They grow increasingly inseparable until Caroline is suddenly diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Gail writes: 'It's the oldest of stories: I had a friend and we shared everything and then she died and we shared that too.' "
~~frontispiece

This is a difficult review for me to write. I share many of the traits of these two women, enough so that my eyes leaked as I read it, and when I got to the part about Caroline being diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and Gail's inconsolable grief, I could do nothing but sob as I continued reading.

This is an incredible book: the author has beautifully portrayed an uncommon and deeply moving friendship, and then shared -- no holds barred -- her grief and sorrow as her friend died, and also painted in stark, realistic terms Caroline's journey through chemo and radiation, slowly sinking to the inevitable end. It's very well-written, so a joy to read, and the emotions brought into the cold light of day will speak to your soul. If you only read two books this year, this should be one of them. show less

This brilliant tribute to friendship is definitely worth reading, and like the friendship it describes, cherishing.

Gail and Caroline met as they were walking their dogs.  Both writers, both women who valued their solitude, they met everyday to walk the dogs, and as the friendship grew, to teach each other the finer points of their chosen sports: swimming and rowing.

Caldwell frames this relationship with a look back at her personal struggles with alcoholism, and shows us how she was able to remain sober with the help of Caroline, who had overcome her own problem with anorexia, but who was struggling to stop smoking.

The premature end to their friendship when Caroline died of lung cancer at the age of 41 did not end the memoir.  Caldwell show more gives us a quiet, calm, and somber reflection on how she was able to continue life while missing her best friend.  The last part of the story is as much a story of her relationship with her dog who helped her through the grieving period.

Although many have claimed this is a tear-jerker, I found the story heart-warming, inspiring and a beautiful tribute to the true meaning of friendship. show less