★★★☆☆
I picked up this book right before departing for Australia. Initially, it felt like a fitting choice, given that it was our first road trip—The Great Ocean Road—together, though looking back, it was perhaps a bit too on the nose (ykyk, read the book). I was less than discreet about feeling unsafe and uncertain about whether this was a good idea. d had not driven in years, assumed speed limits didn’t exist, and had no prior experience driving on the left side of the road.
The week before, when I went home to grab my thicker coats, I whispered to Mom, “If I don’t make it back, this is goodbye.” She just laughed it off and said, “Come on, it’s just a road trip.” Well, why didn’t I drive then? I was a self-admitted coward, having never driven anything other than Dad’s semi-sports car.
I’d read less than a third of the book when we set out on the journey, before falling terribly ill after landing on the third day. I still remember cramming in a few more pages on Bondi Beach, dressed in a red cardigan and a long plaid skirt—a look no one there approved of, yet I felt it was fittingly appropriate for a Coney Island+braids+plaid coat vibe (again ykyk). Then my head began to pound with pain.
I hadn’t picked up the book again until now, binging the rest during a quiet long weekend I chose to take for myself. Here are parallels from the book that glitched my reality:
- “Shut up and look out the window.” — d and I both have parents who love road trips. Mine were huge campers, and d’s preferred RVs. Either way, our dads could drive for hours and for us, we’d sing along to The Eagles.
- “He always gagged whenever Luna vomited. They were connected that way. Ollie could never be happy unless Luna was too.” — My brother and I are also Irish twins, loosely speaking. When we were little, we were wired the exact same way, two peas in a pod, always messing with each other and obviously, I was the mood, teasing older sister.
- “It’s not a trip to Niagara Falls without a ride on the Maid of the Mist. Most people say it’s the most alive they’ve felt in years.” — It’s been a decade since, but I still remember how close we stood in our red raincoats, hair soaked, admiring that iconic waterfall. Another road trip we’d taken from there to Texas too!
- “100,000 Words You Might Need to Know for the GRE and played it over the speakers in the car.” — I’d literally been thinking about how to tackle this test. A good reminder to get back on track.
- “She hadn’t gone anywhere either. Failure to launch, she’d seen it called. People in their twenties who didn’t move far from home.” — It felt like a personal attack when Sophie recounted this. She had even gotten into NYU, a place I would die to get into.
- “Sophie had worked for nearly four years at the Diamond Greeting Card Company in New Bedford, first as the assistant to the CEO Alan Diamond, a good and kind man who gave Sophie her first job out of college even though she knew nothing about how an office worked.” — The parallels to my current career path are shocking! If I had been given a choice in industries, I probably would have stupidly chosen hers after watching 500 Days of Summer (2009) one too many times.
- “A person needs three things to be happy: something to do; someone to love; and something to look forward to.” — A friend recently shared her three markers of happiness. My answers: (1) a job, (2) d, and (3) this blog/writing.
- “Sophie’s legs twitched. She had been running several miles a day for years, ever since college when shed slept with one of her professors and had to run off the shame. Sophie wished she could go for a night run outside, but she was still too spooked from the other night.” — I also started running in college, not for the same reasons, but to practice patience with the things I want.
- “The kids were pretending Phyllis was one of the killer whales in SeaWorld they’d watched the documentary about.” – d and I literally watched the documentary, Blackfish (2013) in Melbourne out of sheer curiosity from a YT mention.
- “Tears welled in Sophie’s eyes. It was sad, those people who had died. She hadn’t known any of them.” — The first time I ever cried over a stranger’s death as a kid was for the Crocodile Hunter.
- “Sometimes it’s good to cry instead. The important thing is feeling something.” — I’ve always been a weeper since as a kid, for various reasons, both good and bad. Now, whenever I cry, I just know my period is coming.
- “Focus on Alaska, he heard Fred say in his ear. We have to focus on what is happening right now.” — Our most recent big family road trip was also to Alaska! Though now that I realize what the book meant by “Alaska,” the association has been tainted a bit.
Not an actual review, but the book gave me a good laugh, a reality check and a reminder for a goal I’ve set for myself as a kid, “To drive across the country by 30.”