So Far Gone

★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

320 pages

What’s it about?

Rhys Kinnick is a former newspaper reporter who decided to go off the grid after he punched his son-in-law at Thanksgiving dinner in 2016. All his son-in-law's conspiracy theories just got to be too much for him, and he lost it. He throws his cellphone out the window and retreats to his grandfather's land in rural Washington. When his two grandchildren show up on his doorstep eight years later, he doesn't even recognize them. He can't help thinking, what kind of father or grandfather gets so far estranged from his family?

What did it make me think about?

How divided we are as a country.

Should I read it?

I was not expecting this book. It is a small book with laser-like focus on some of the issues that people in America are struggling with. Jess Walter crafts this story in a way to make a point about the divisions we are facing in our country. This quote could be describing my hometown, "Lucy could remember when a fight at a school board meeting would be unimaginable (fight over what? Lunch lady uniforms? Custodian pay?) but now, with everyone on edge, still pissed off by school closures during the pandemic, angry about the teaching of sex ed or evolution or drag queens or gay rights, or about some book no one had checked out from the library in a decade, Random yelling was practically an agenda item." Sound familiar? The story itself is a page-turner, and you will want to see what happens with Rhys and his family. I enjoyed this one. As usual, both extremes come off poorly. This book may offend a few, but the majority of people will enjoy the plot and characters.

A passage I marked

"He was glad to be able to call and text Bethany, but the thing was a constant delivery system for terrifying developments from all over the country, from around an overheated, overpopulated planet. Technology, as he saw it, had finally succeeded in shrinking the globe, so much so that every news story felt dangerous and personal..."