Name: All the Way Home
Rating: 4 (1 reviews)
ISBN: 9780764226632

Ann Tatlock

From an abusive German-Irish family, Augusta informally adopts Sunny Yamagata's family as her own until the Yamagatas are sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in the 1930s, but they meet again in Mississippi in the 1960s.

A Novel

All the Way Home

Jeni Enjaian

Tatlock's wordsmith ability increases tremendously with each book she writes.

I really enjoyed this story though I would have enjoyed it more had she spent more time developing the first half of the story, the part describing Augie and Sunny's childhood friendship. That likely would have required a second book since this book is already quite long. I wouldn't have been adverse to that though I understand why Tatlock chose to structure the book as she did.

Once again I am amazed at how capably Tatlock makes her narrator's voice appropriate to the age of the character. Young Augie and Sunny behave as nine-thirteen year old girls would and should have acted in that time period.

I also appreciated how Tatlock chose to end the story. (Mild spoiler alert) More specifically, I love that she had Augie return to see her Uncle Finn.

While this book is not quite good enough for five stars, I did thoroughly enjoy it and highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

*Update*
While others did not like the "split narrative" aspect of the book, I appreciated it. Unlike other of Tatlock's books, the narrative didn't suffer any confusion in narration. She also limited the number of characters in comparison to other works.

I absolutely loved the implicit comparison between the bigotry Sunny and the Yamagata's experienced to the racism of the Civil Rights Era south. That comparison draws unmistakable parallels and highlights the ugliness of bigotry in any form.

This book survived round two of the "purge."

All the Way Home A Novel

Reviews

Highlights