A Multi-layered Adventure

books:

	• Getting Out: A Novel Gwendolen Gross Henry Holt and Co., 2002 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Getting Out

Aptly named, Gwendolen Gross' second book has the same satisfying descriptions of nature as her previous book, Field Guide. The main character, Hannah, yearns to unzip and step out of the skin that is her life. Knowing how that feels, I give this book five stars. If you love the outdoors, you'll love Hannah's adventures.

Join the Adventure Club!

Just finished reading Getting Out, and I thought it was just great. Main character Hannah is trapped in her mundane design job and distracted by her dysfunctional family. She joins the Adventure Club on a whim and becomes part of a hodgepodge group of adventure seekers whom she never truly learns much about. However, she does learn a lot about herself. I found the characters easy to relate to and really enjoyed the conclusion to this fun read.

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A Multi-layered Adventure

The day after finishing "Getting Out," I threw together some gorp and went canoeing with my 4-year-old son. It was just too much to sit in my backyard for yet one more day and let a fictive character have all the adventure. And Hannah Blue does have the adventures. What with bats and murky cave water and kissing in tents, there is plenty of occupation to keep Hannah at a distance from her troublesome family and from making any commitments to her adoring boyfriend. I loved Gross's descriptions and turns of phrase that make this book an adventure of language as well -- a characteristic that was also present in her first book, Field Guide. What made the book one I couldn't put down, though, were her truisms, sprinkled in like spring water, that reveal the real Hannah beneath the backpacking wonder. Her escapades, it seems, are keeping her from the deeper, more complicated adventure at hand: the work of relationships. How this drama plays itself out is what made it hard for me to put this book down.

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A young woman resisting the demands of her dependent family seeks escape in an increasingly dangerous outdoor adventure.

When Hannah Blue joins the Adventurer's Club, she pictures campfires and star-filled nights. And she imagines a temporary respite from the ever-present shadow of her parents' divorce, her siblings' inability to cope in the real world without her vigilance, and her boyfriend, Ben, who, it seems, is looking for a commitment. Most of all, she needs a break from the irresistible pull of her father, whose unpredictable moods and imaginary health scares have always kept him at the center of the family universe.

But when her father's latest illness turns out to be real, Hannah finds herself growing addicted to the freedom she finds in the silty caves deep beneath the sunlit woods, on the crevasses accessible only with crampons and ice axes. It's as if she feels more herself when she's outside -- until she realizes that the people she keeps leaving may not always wait for her to come back.

Featuring an appealing, spirited heroine and vivid outdoor settings, Getting Out surpasses the stylistic and storytelling promise displayed in Gwendolen Gross's first novel, Field Guide, and yields a fresh look at the high stakes of love's many expectations.

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