Not letting liquid in, but letting it out, leaving a rust-colored trail behind her.” And this: “When their ship pulled ashore, seven days later, all of Otto’s hair had gone white, like the seafoam, like the bones of the fish they had every day for dinner and supper, all of it pure white.” And this: “One of the cows sighed, a heavy sigh with the weight of a cow. “She had been in Manitoba for three days, three dry days, when Etta’s boots started leaking. Hooper’s understated, rhythmic language tells you just enough to feel like you’re there. He’s a pleasure that should be come across in the course of reading this magnificent and quietly powerful book. We understand why he goes to find Etta when Otto doesn’t. We learn how much Russell loves both Otto and Etta and how deeply it affected him that he couldn’t fight. We travel to the war front and read the letters Otto painstakingly writes to Etta, who’s teaching him to spell. Looking for comfort in familiar places (Russell, the farm) and unfamiliar (a guinea pig). We learn what it’s like to be Otto, waiting for Etta to find the sea. We also learn how she became a schoolteacher and met Otto and Russell they were her students in one little room until Otto left for the war and Russell couldn’t.
We learn what it’s like for Etta to travel on foot, skirting lakes and towns, eating little and sleeping outside. The memories aren’t in order, and they come and go. The structure of this book is a lot like sitting down to interview your grandmother. The book’s four main characters, those named in the title, are all it needs. You can’t look away because you’ll lose your place, so you just keep going. It has some resemblance to Cormac McCarthy’s work, not least because it doesn’t use quotation marks for dialogue, which makes you feel like you’re floating through the text. This book is simple and spare and deep all at the same time.
The rest of the note lists her family, though Russell is technically an old friend. We learn in bits and pieces about her state of mind and her mental state, perhaps most from the first line of the note she’s carrying: Etta Gloria Kinnick of Deerdale farm. She’s going to see the sea, which Otto saw in the war.
Etta and Otto and Russell and James has taught me that not enough books take elderly people seriously, that I might have to give magical realism a second chance, and that author Emma Hooper can capture the important moments of relationships and feelings in just a few perfectly structured sentences.Įtta leaves Otto a note and starts walking.
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