And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
Fiction
2016 Atria Books
Finished on January 16, 2019
Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Grandpa and Noah are sitting on a bench in a square that keeps getting smaller every day. The square is strange but also familiar, full of the sweet scent of the hyacinths that Grandma loved to grow in her garden.

As they wait together, they tell jokes and discuss their shared love of mathematics. Grandpa recalls what it was like to fall in love with his wife--and what it was like to lose her. She's as real to him now as the first day he met her, but he dreads the day when he won't remember her.

This peculiar space that is growing dimmer and more confusing all the time is where they will learn to say good-bye, the scent of hyacinths in the air, nothing to fear.

Fredrik Backman has rendered an exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man's struggle to hold onto his most precious memories and his family's efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.

This little book with a big message is sure to be treasured for generations to come.

It's been over four years since I first read A Man Called Ove. I loved that novel, but haven't gotten around to reading anything else by Backman's until this week when I spotted this slim book on the shelf at the library. Unlike many of my friends who have read the novella, I didn't fall in love with the story, nor did I shed any tears when I was finished. It's a tender tale about an older man dealing with Alzheimer's and I was just as confused as he, spending too much time trying to sort out whose point of view was being shared. At times it was obviously Grandpa's, but there were other moments when I wasn't sure if I was reading about Noah (the grandson) or Noah's father Ted (as a young boy). I may have to read it again.