Let's Take the Long Way Home - A Memoir of Friendship

This memoir was not compelling or revealing. I had expected more given the general reader and editorial reviews and the fact that Caldwell is a Pulitzer winner for criticism. Who would guess that someone who reads, analyzes, and writes about the quality of the writing of others would put together such a dull and evasive memoir? The most I can say for the writing is that it was grammatically sound.

There were surely elements of Caldwell and Knapp's lives that would have been fascinating and inspiring to read about if written in less of a reserved and cautious way. Caldwell seems to have been putting all her best effort into hiding and keeping quiet all sorts of truth, info, detail, and feeling in writing about this part of their lives. That and at times it read as if she really only knew Knapp in a passing or limited way, and not as such a strongly bonded friend. And, I would agree with at least one other reviewer that the topic switched around a little too much between Caldwell's own story of alcoholism, etc. and the actually completely separate story of her friendship with Knapp. This made the book feel unfocused.

Bottom line: a memoir needs to share in a clear and direct way with the reader and this book didn't do it. It had sentences that you could diagram in English class, but no real heart or soul in those sentences.

It wasn't hard to read, it just didn't move me in any direction except disappointment and apathy.

"I wanted the warmth of spontaneous connection and the freedom to be left alone." ~ Gail Caldwell

From the start of this profoundly beautiful story we know that Gail Caldwell loses her best friend Caroline Knapp. As she puts it so precisely, you can't "sidestep the cruelty of an intolerable loss." For about a third of this book the words were blurry because it is so moving. Just when I thought I had composed myself enough to read on, I cried again. Sometimes I'd read a sentence and reread it again and again because it was so true.

This is the story of two soul mates who love dogs, swimming and sculling. In some way it doesn't matter what they were doing, they just loved being together. After an outing they would find themselves both at home calling each other on the phone. Their friendship is deep, meaningful and essential!

There are some surprising details like how they both dated the same man. What are the chances of that happening? Then there is the fact that they both loved drinking at one point in their lives and overcame their addiction before meeting. Gail Caldwell talks briefly about her own drinking problem but mostly focuses on the friendship.

"Let's Take the Long Way Home" is a book that will work its way into your heart in ways few books ever will. I loved the warmth of Gail Caldwell's writing style and how she expresses such honest feelings in lucid prose. This is one of the best books I've read this year!

~The Rebecca Review

This beautiful memoir of friendship could only come from someone who has experienced an intimate emotional connection of the highest level with another human being. Gail Caldwell had that connection with fellow writer Caroline Knapp, then lost it when Knapp died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer.

I was consumed by Knapp's own memoir, Drinking: A Love Story many years ago. I remember reading of Knapp's death not long after that and feeling so pained by the fact that she had survived alcoholism only to be robbed of her life just a few years later. Caldwell's book was like finding a missing piece for me, an intimate look into the lives of Knapp and Caldwell and the tremendous friendship they wove together through walks in the woods, long summer vacations together and countless hours on the phone. A friendship that close changes lives forever, but neither was prepared for what lie ahead.

It seemed perverse almost, that fate would tear these two souls apart and Caldwell chronicles her private suffering with unrelenting candor and despair. Not only could I see the hole in her heart, her brilliant storytelling allowed me to feel it to some degree. That's the mark of excellence in a good memoir. Let's Take the Long Way Home doesn't just tell a story. It takes us along for a walk in the woods and like Caldwell, at journey's end, we're never the same.

Highly recommended, esp. after reading Knapp's memoir.

This slim memoir conveys three trains of thought: author Gail's love/hate battle with alcohol, which she finally overcomes at age 33; her love for her dog, a beautiful white Samoyed named Clementine; and her random meeting and subsequent best-friendship with fellow writer, dog-lover and recovering alcoholic Caroline. The canine bond seems open, emotional, honest and true. The human bond, which is touted as the center of the memoir, sometimes seems cautious, competitive and a little closed. At times, Clementine comes to life more than Caroline. But maybe it is easier to write about the unconditional love one shares with a dog rather than the more complicated relationship shared with a best friend. And why is it that competitive people with addictive-type personalities will transfer that addictive need from one thing (alcohol) to another (in this case, rowing)? But I guess things in moderation don't make for very compelling reading. I also have to add that I was prepared for what happens to Caroline -- it is splashed all over the book jacket, after all. But what hit much harder was the other near-tragedy that follows. The emotional impact of that is even more powerful. Overall, I could have done with less about the alcoholic years and more about Caroline, but this is a decent read.

Gail Caldwell's memoir is a touching account of friendship that is brief but all encompassing. Although she and Caroline Knapp are only friends for seven years before Caroline is felled by lung cancer, the two built a relationship that is deeper than what's enjoyed by many blood relatives.

Their lives contained many similarities. Both women are childless, single writers and former alcoholics who initially bond over their dogs, but their relationship deepens to the point where Gail says it was easy to mistake them for sisters or lovers.

Both women are loners which makes it seem kind of unlikely that they would form this lasting friendship, but their relationship works because they respect each other's boundaries and both believed in confronting problems head-on instead of stewing in silence.

Gail's account of her years as a functional alcoholic are stark and poignant. In one particularly bad moment, she passes out in a drunken stupor and breaks four ribs. This doesn't stop her from drinking and she fashions a portable bar by attaching a bag of ice and a flask of liquor to her crutches. It takes her a long time to accept that she was in fact an alcoholic and needed help to stop drinking. And unlike Caroline who'd written a book about her drinking problem, Gail never really liked to discuss this part of her life and they had been friends for a while before she ever broached the subject.

But despite all their other similarities, it is their devotion to their dogs that dominates most of the story. These women love their animals and spent lots of time and money training and caring for them. Gail reckons that it's sort of a maternal bond that you have with someone who is completely dependent on you for your survival, but the incongruity is that Gail, who is reclusive after she gives up drinking, was afraid of anyone needing her that much or of her needing anyone else that much. She was even reluctant to call Caroline after she was involved in an accident that landed her in the hospital.

Gail's friendship with Caroline was a gift that allowed her to grow and become a more open person, and her loss also taught Gail some hard lessons about grief and sorrow. This book is truly a remarkable tale about the intersection of the lives of two kindred spirits.

"It's an old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too."

These opening lines from Gail Caldwell's memoir LET'S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME for some reason brought to mind the opening of Erich Segal's bestselling novel, Love Story:

"What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me."

I know, I know. Caldwell's book is about a real life friendship between two women, and Segal's is a near smarmy sentimental piece of pop fiction, but you don't get to choose what pops into your head when you're reading.

Caldwell's book came out in 2010, and I remember reading about it at the time and wanting to read it, but didn't get around to it until now. I was interested in the book because I had read her friend Caroline Knapp's Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs, a very moving memoir of how a dog helped her to cope with loneliness and a long recovery from anorexia and alcoholism. And I liked that one enough to read another Knapp book, a posthumous collection of her newspaper columns and essays called The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays.

Caldwell is a good writer, but reading about loss and grief is never easy. However, the first half of LONG WAY HOME, with its loving and sometimes humorous descriptions of how the two met and how their friendship deepened, makes it a bit easier. New Englander Knapp and Texas-born Caldwell were both basically loners, devoted to their dogs and their writing, and to a small circle of close friends. Knapp had struggled with anorexia, Caldwell had polio as a child, and both were recovering alcoholics. Caldwell was a swimmer, Knapp a rower. So they had much in common, not to mention their beloved dogs, Lucille and Clementine - an added bonus for readers who are dog lovers.

This is a deeply felt story of how women bond. I was struck by this passage, feeling very much the outsider -

"'Men don't really understand women's friendships, do they?' I once asked my friend Louise, a writer who lived in Minnesota. 'Oh God, no,' she said. 'And we must never tell them.'"

And yet this book is perhaps one of the most heartfelt tellings of such a friendship that I have ever read.

It is the second half of the book that is so hard, so painful, the part that describes Knapp's final illness and death from cancer at the age of forty-two. In the last days Caldwell tells of wearing a T-shirt to the hospital with two of the first important commands learned in dog obedience classes printed on the back: SIT! STAY! And, she tells us, in those last days and final hours, "that was what I did. I sat and I stayed."

This is not a book you can blithely say, I really enjoyed it. The subject is too sad, too serious. But you can certainly learn something from it. And if you have ever lost someone you loved, human or canine, you will definitely relate.

Gail Caldwell has written a beautiful tribute to her dear friend, and to the joys and mysteries of a deep and true friendship. And maybe I wasn't so wrong after all in thinking of the Erich Segal book. Because LET'S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME is also a love story in the most elemental sense. Caroline would have been so pleased. Highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

If you have tears, prepare to shed them.

Caroline Knapp was the author of Drinking: A Love Story. I've wriiten about it on [...] because some of you surely have issues with alcohol, and I thought it might be of use. And because it's acutely observed and beautifully written. And because there's a painful irony here: Caroline got sober, only to die in June of 2002, when she was forty-two, seven weeks after she was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer.

Caroline Knapp had a best friend. Gail Caldwell. Also a writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2001. She too had alcohol issues.

Two women writers. Both dog lovers. Both recovering alcoholics. Both living alone, and liking it. Both athletes. Near-neighbors in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Friends. Best friends. One died. The other wrote a book: "Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship." [To buy the book from the store, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

There are men and women I love, and I think they know it, and I hope they know how incredibly lucky I feel that I'm in their lives, but we're talking about something else here, something deeper and more precious and, certainly, scarier.

"It's an old story," Caldwell begins. "I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that.''

Define everything. Well, rowing on the Charles River. Writing. Alcoholism. And, most of all, afternoon-long walk with their dogs:

"'Let's take the long way home,' she would say once we had gotten to the car, and then we would wend our way through the day traffic of Somerville or Medford, in no hurry to separate. At the end of the drive, with Clementine [Caldwell's dog] snoring softly in the back seat, we would sit outside the house of whoever was being dropped off, and keep talking. Then we would go inside our respective houses and call each other on the phone."

This is a grief memoir, but that descent into deepest sadness is also, by definition, an exploration of peak experiences. Everything's heightened, brighter, sharper in lives lived this acutely. This is a 190-page book --- we don't get to Caroline's illness until page 125. What comes before? This great friendship, detailed. But also a condensed biography of Caroline Knapp. And a lacerating autobiography of Gail Caldwell:

"I've always remembered one thing Rich [Caldwell's AA adviser] said one day, when I was buried in fear and shame at the idea that I had drunk my way into alcoholism. He asked me why I was so frightened, and I told him, weeping, the first thing that came into my mind: "I'm afraid that no one will ever love me again." He leaned toward me with a smile of great kindness on his face, his hands clasped in front of him. "Don't you know?" he asked gently. "The flaw is the thing we love."

Eventually --- you dread it --- Caldwell gets to Caroline's fatal illness. The disbelief. The stoicism. And then, as Caroline begins her final descent, the combination of love and pride and hurt --- the recognition moment of what there was and what will be lost.

"Near the end, I asked him [Caroline's former therapist] what he thought was happening, and he said, "Tell her everything you haven't said," and I smiled with relief. "There's nothing," I said. "I've already told her everything."

Can you imagine that? I can't.

I've always had a weakness for damaged women --- they're so much more beautiful than the perfect ones. From her own book, I found Caroline Knapp to be ravishing. Now, here, I add Gail Caldwell.

What an astonishing friendship. What great women. What a stellar, unforgettable book.

I first read this book shortly after it was published in 2010. I thought it beautifully written about friendship and loss. Gail Caldwell is a talent. I even sent copies to a few of my closest friends. However, several months ago I lost someone incredibly close to me, suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 40 years old. I cleaned every closet and every book shelf looking for "Let's Take the Long Way Home." I felt compelled to hold it and read the words again. I've read it twice in the 3 months since his passing. In addition to friendship, this book is about grief and trying to learn to shoulder the weight of it. One of few that put it all down into words that captured my loss. Thank you, Gail Caldwell. This book is a part of my healing.

If you haven't yet discovered Caroline Knapp's writing this is an excellent intro. But, as much as this book is a remembrance of the friendship between the author, Gail Cauldwell, and Knapp, it is also about the closeness of friends, about death, and about loss. It is a small book crammed with wisdom.

"It's an old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and we shared that, too." That is how this book begins.

I found Caroline Knapp when I read her book , "Pack of Two", about the author and her dog Lucille. Then I read "Drinking, A Love Story". Knapp's writing is clear and personal. (Check the the store reviews to see how many people were helped by this book.) When I learned that she had died in 2002, I wanted more. "Let's Take the Long Way Home, A Memoir of Friendship" is that. Gail Caldwell shares her feelings and thoughts and memories about her best friend, Caroline Knapp. "What they never tell you about grief," she writes, "is that missing someone is the simple part."

Who is this book for? Readers like me who were moved by Caroline Knapp's writing and want more-- more about Knapp's life and personality and even her death. Readers who want an honest and thoughtful memoir about each of the two halves of a relationship, together and apart.

Knapp and Caldwell are two independent women writers who love their dogs and are recovering alcoholics when they meet. Caldwell writes about her own Texas background and her family's wisdom. She talks about feeling at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city where Knapp lived all her life. And she tells stories about her friend, sharing her humor and her love and her strength. So I found what I was looking for in this book, another side of Caroline Knapp that she would have been too modest to write about herself.

This book is a heartfelt memoir of a friendship between two women, who on the surface seem unlikely friends, but underneath have much in common. As we find out in the beginning, the author loses her best friend, Caroline, to cancer at a fairly young age. It is a sad and poignant story, and there was much I could relate to in it, as I too lost my best friend at a young age. I wish I could have written a book as good as this one is, to immortalize a bit of that friendship. Time goes by, and memories fade, but the friendship remains a part of you.

The author and Caroline bond over their dogs - both of them are passionate about them (I'm passionate about mine, too). They exercise them together, take them to parks together - they include their dogs in most of the things they do together. They also find that each of them are recovering alcoholics (another thing I could relate to), but that is just a small part of the memoir. Gail teaches Caroline to swim, Caroline teaches Gail to row, and they appear to become like family to each other, (along with their dogs).

This is an easy and compelling read - I read it in 2 days. It is NOT a happy read for the most part, so it's not one for the beach. Gail Caldwell writes VERY well - you can almost feel her emotion coming at you through the pages, and more than once I found myself with tears in my eyes.

This book is written from the heart - there's no doubt about that. Highly recommended - very close to 5 stars.

Gail Caldwell's, Let's Take the Long Way Home, is not just another memoir. It's a beautiful written piece about friendship, love and loss. It's about (2) women, friends for just (6) years, but who had so very much in common. Two women who knew much more about each other than any other person in their lives.

Both writers, the author Gail Caldwell, grew up in Texas but moved to Cambridge, MA, and worked as a book review editor for the Boston Globe. Caroline Knapp, grew up in Boston and also lived in Cambridge. She worked as an editor for the Boston Phoenix when she and Gail became friends. Together they shared a love for the outdoors, physical activity and dogs. Privately, they won their battles with alcoholism, and each craved solitude at times as well.

Caldwell, (9) years older than Knapp, writes in a way that most readers will relate to. By the time we get to a certain age, most of us have lost a person or a pet we have loved and have had to deal with intense emotional grief. However, I suspect fewer of us have lost a person who knew your every secret and your every fear. This is the kind of intense friendship that Gail and Caroline shared in just (6) years that they were friends.

Over long walks with their dogs, often "taking the long way home", rowing expeditions, and deep private conversations, these two women shared something that many may never experience in a lifetime. But in just a few months that was about to change. In June of 2002, just (7) weeks after learning she had stage IV lung cancer, Caroline Knapp passed away at the age of 42, and Gail was left to cope with her overwhelming sense of grief and loss.
There were so many passages that made me stop and reflect and reread. I rarely write in books, but my copy has stars and stripes throughout. Here are some of the passages I loved:

[p.13]
"Finding Caroline was like placing a personal ad for an imaginary friend, then having her show up at your door funnier and better than you had conceived ---Apart, we had each been frightened drunks and aspiring writers and dog lovers; together we became a small corporation.
---------------------------------
[p.107]
"But as much as I complained about solitude, I also required it. I put a high price on my freedom from obligation, of having to report to no one....The truth was that I had always fled. The men I didn't marry, the relationships I walked away from or only half-heartedly engaged in -- there were always well-lit exits, according to building code, in every edifice I helped create."

[p123]
IT'S TAKEN YEARS FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND THAT dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur and epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one anothers lives until not death, but distance, does as part-time and space the heart's weariness are the blander executioners of human connection."

[p.163]

"I had a friend who years before had lost her firstborn when he was an infant, and she told me one of the most piercing consolations she received in her early grief was from a man who recognized the fierce loyalty one feels to the dead. 'The real hell of this,' he told her, is that you are going to get through it. "Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation".

So you see, for me this memoir is one of those rare books that I'm sure I'll reread at a time when I feel that need to revisit the subject of grief. Let's Take the Long Way Home, will give the reader a reason to smile, a reason to shed a few tears and a reason to tell the people you love the most how much they mean to you over and over again.

Don't Miss It!

From the first page of Let's Take the Long Way Home, the reader knows that Gail and Caroline were best friends, and that Caroline is now dead. It casts a shadow over the book. The reader knows, when Gail is talking about their happiest times, that she will lose Caroline. As a result, this is just as much a memoir of loss as it is one of the best of friendships.

It's easy to understand why Gail and Caroline connected so quickly - both unmarried, both writers, both alcoholics, both in committed relationships with their dogs - they have a lot in common. It's wonderful to see them teach each other, learn from each other, and come to depend on one another more and more as the book progresses. On every page, you can feel the love that Gail felt for Caroline, and how much she is mourning her loss.

Let's Take the Long Way Home is also very beautifully written. Caldwell is a talented writer, and it's clear that she poured her heart out into this book. In a lot of ways, it's not just a story of a friendship, but a love story about two kindred spirits that were lucky enough to find one another. Caldwell feels Caroline's death as much as she'd feel the death of a spouse. It's really heartbreaking, and yet Caldwell's writing is so gorgeous that it somehow helps. It makes it easier to bear.

This is a slip of a book, and a very quiet one at that. It's not a memoir of shocking revelations or adventure. It's just a small story about two people who were best friends until one of them died. Caroline couldn't have asked for a better tribute, or a better friend to accompany her to the end of her life.

Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is a memoir of the deep and beautiful friendship that Gail shared with her best friend Caroline Knapp. It is also a novel of the depth of Gail's grief at losing her best friend Caroline to cancer. This novel touched me on so many levels and although I've never met this author I feel a kinship with her just through her words and I'll explain this more later on. I know it may sound weird to say that a book about someone's death and another's grief is beautiful but his novel is just that. Yes it is sad but if you can get past that, you will find your heart touched by this wonderful friendship, not only between friends, but also between humans and pets. It's a book I won't soon forget and as I turned the last page I found myself wanting to go and start it over again.

Gail and Caroline had much in common. The biggest difference between the two was their age as Gail was nine years older than Caroline. Other than that they were like two peas in a pod - both were writers, both had and loved their dogs, both had struggled with alcoholism, both were very competitive, and that's just tip of the things they found they had in common. I think it's interesting to note that they met late in life - Caroline was in her late thirties and Gail older. Often we think that 'best friends' need to be those that are formed when we are younger but in Gail's memoir, we see that isn't always the case. The deep bond of friendship that these women formed in a very short time is testament to that.

Their bond was initially brought on by their dogs Clementine and Lucille. Both women had just gotten puppies and wanted to train them. They would take them out to the woods and walk while the dogs ran around and played. This became a ritual for them, where the dogs would be let loose while they walked and talked about anything and everything. Within a short time they found that they had shared more together in terms of their lives than they had thought possible. They shared everything and called each other all the time. Theirs was a friendship that would last forever.

Then came the shattering news that Caroline had Stage four lung cancer and it was untreatable. There is no worse news. Thus begins the journey you take with someone that ultimately you know you are losing. Of course Gail spends all the time she can with Caroline and does everything she can to make things easier for her. There is no escaping the inevitable though. No matter how much you wish it isn't so, life will take the path it is on to the end. It was truly heartbreaking to read Gail's words describing her grief and the future without Caroline.

I connected with Gail on two very important levels. One is losing a best friend to cancer and another is loving your dog with everything you have so that when you lose that pet you feel certain life is over and yet you keep waking up to see another day. Losing anyone to cancer is devastating and I can still clearly remember the grief of losing my friend and it's been years now. When Gail talks about her dog Clementine from a puppy to old age, I could feel so many similarities that there are between pet lovers. When she talks about losing her dog on top of losing Caroline my heart truly broke. Anyone who reads my blog knows of me losing my beloved Buddy just last year and although I don't talk about it anymore, I am far from being over it. I will always miss him and love him. It is in these ways that this memoir of Gail's really touched my heart and will stay there.

I think for those who enjoy reading memoirs this is one you shouldn't miss. I know it sounds weird to say that I like reading memoirs of people who have cancer or have experienced it's effects through a friendship. I hesitate to say that I like reading these types of books - I think it's more the connection I feel through them that attracts me. With Gail's memoir her relationship both with Caroline and her dog Clementine really is what brings me to say that this is a really good memoir and that's saying a lot since I don't read a whole lot of them. Also I think my need to read these types of memoirs is really to see how the people in them survive and move on to live their lives. I don't think I'll forget this book for a good long while. Just a warning - be prepared with some tissues.

To end I'd like to share a few quotes that really stuck with me...

'It's an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.' (pg 3)

'Grief is what tells you who you are alone.' (pg 3)

'What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.' (pg 9)

'Death is a divorce nobody asked for; to live through it is to find a way to disengage from what you thought you couldn't stand to lose.' (pg 153)

'I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.' (pg 182)

Gail Caldwell does an exquisite job of inviting you to share her innermost thoughts and feelings about friendship, addiction and love. This book is a love story about best friends sharing a bond that even husbands and lovers often can't share. If you've ever had a best friend with whom you could share everything and anything, you know what I mean.

Let's Take The Long Way Home: A Memoir Of Friendship (Random House Books, August 2010) is a moving book that is both sadly thought provoking and emotionally uplifting at the same time. I too lost my best friend to cancer and realize what a powerful loss that can be. It's like a part of yourself is missing. It's amazing how powerful and life changing a deep friendship can be.

How fortunate we are to find a "kindred soul" with whom we can share everything - the good, bad and even the ugly sides of ourselves. Author Gail Caldwell allows us to share the friendship between herself and her best friends. One friend is Caroline Knapp and the other is her beloved Samoyed, Clementine. The pivotal element weaving its way through the story is Caroline's and Gail's unwavering love for their dogs. "Everything really started with the dogs."

Unless you've experienced such deep friendship and devotion with both your human friend and your canine friend, you may have a difficult time understanding the depth of this book. This book explores the journey of a woman who allowed herself to experience unconditional love and in return found her loving self.

This is also the story of overcoming addiction - addiction to cigarettes and alcohol. Both Gail and Caroline shared these addictions in common. Caroline died of cancer. Conquering addiction means looking deep inside for answers. Friendship that allows you to be your authentic self, allows you to search for the answers that are supportive of discovering those inner issues that manifest themselves into addictive behaviors.

Gail wrote about Caroline and Clementine from the heart of someone who has survived the loss of dear loved ones. It's a love story to her two best friends who have departed from her physical life but remain as emotionally important today as they did then. "It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it." This book is a beautiful memoir to the power of unconditional love, deep friendship and the discovery of self.

Thank you Gail Caldwell for a beautifully written memoir about life, love and honoring precious memories.

How good is this book? ...I picked this book off the shelves of Barnes and Noble, while on a reading a date with my husband. (Our dates involve sitting in Barnes and Nobel and reading in the quiet, while sipping coffee. We occasionally interrupt each other to share the good parts of our literary pursuits.) I started reading Let's take the Long Way Home, having never heard of Gail Caldwell or Caroline Knapp. I read only about 30 pages, before I put the book down and went to buy the book by Caroline Knapp "Drinking: A Love Story". That's how compelling "Let's take the Long way home" is - it makes you want to research and find out more about the subject of the book. So, I bought "Drinking: a Love Story" from the store.com and then read it in two nights. (It's one of the most compelling memoirs I've ever read). Then a few days later, I was back in Barnes and Nobel, alone this time, because I couldn't wait another few days to start reading Let's Take the Long Way Home, again. I wasn't going to buy the book. Just read a few more pages. To buy it later, when I had the money. I read about 30 more pages, then I had to leave. It was agony not to buy the book, but we are on a budget, and I buy so many books, I'm trying to cut back in honor of our budget. So, I stayed at home for 3 days, researching on the Internet, Gail Caldwell, and Caroline Knapp. And then I had to take my teenager to the mall and I couldn't resist, it was a compulsion. I had to buy for FULL PRICE the hardback cover of Let's Take the Long Way Home. The book is just riveting, lovely, compelling and what else can I say, I feel as if I know and love Gail Caldwel. Rarely do you find such beautiful descriptive prose, which without being maudlin, describes a near perfect friendship. If you want a good read, something that will take you away, while you read it to another time, another life, and a friendship of soul mates - buy this book. Even if you have to go over budget and buy the hardback copy. It's worth it - like a fine piece of art. You will love it.

If you are lucky, you may experience at least once in your life a soul-mate friendship, the kind where you find this magical version of yourself in the guise of another. Such was the case with Gail Caldwell and her late friend, Caroline Knapp.

These single women writers (although Knapp did marry her boyfriend a few weeks before her untimely death at age 43 from lung cancer) came from quite different backgrounds but bonded through work, dogs, rowing, and recovery from alcoholism. Knapp herself wrote a 1996 bestselling memoir, "Drinking: A Love Story."

The account of their growing friendship in Cambridge, MA through their mutual interests is engaging. The section where Caldwell describes her background and recovery from alcoholism deepens the story. Even richer is the period following Knapp's death where Caldwell so convincingly describes the exile of grief. In a devastating turn, loss echoes loss when Caldwell must put down her beloved Samoyed, Clementine, in an account that will break your heart. Read this memoir only if you want to feel deeply.

The beauty of this book is how it well it captures the serendipitous spark of friendship, its growth and deepening, and its loss. It shows that although a life may end, the relationship continues.

Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home is a beautiful book. There were so many poetic sentences and passages that the simple act of reading this memoir was a joy. The story of her friendship with Caroline held me captive, and without a doubt, that was my favorite part of the book. I couldn't help but think about my experiences with friendship, both good and bad, and be grateful for the select few that have stayed as pillars in my life. Caldwell's writing about her realization that she needed Caroline crosses all barriers of circumstance and perspective, and I could easily relate it to my life.

This is definitely a book to be savored. Although it is a relatively short book, I found myself reading small portions at a time because I liked to absorb what I read, not to mention go back and read passages that struck me the most.

While I found Caldwell's story of her struggle with alcoholism, I found it hard to connect to her friendship with Caroline. I understand that Caroline also had the same problem, but I expected her to bring it to a close, or at least bring it up with their friendship somehow, but that never happened. It was still a riveting portion of the book and was very well told, so while this may seem like a complaint, it really is just more of wanting that connection.

While I am not a novice to the memoir genre, I am always in awe of how people can open themselves up, share their experience and in turn edify the experiences of others.

I received this book as a Goodreads First-reads win, and the opinions I have expressed are entirely my own. Thank you to Goodreads.com for the opportunity to read this book.

I loved Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship. It is easy to picture and relate to the life she describes in brief, "single woman, doesn't want kids, loves dogs." I'm tempted to quote Caldwell's long explanation as well because she says it so well. But then I've marked my copy of the book in so many places and I realize that quoting whole sections of her book makes for a boring review.

What I loved about the book and why I recommend it: Caldwell writes so well and the story of their friendship will remind you of the best friendships that you've made. The humor, support, kindness, and closeness that Caroline and Gail shared come across so well.

The independence and strength that Gail and Caroline seem to share is inspiring as well. The book reminds me of the times when I've felt as independent, certain and strong and of the people that help us stay strong. It's not that Let's Take the Long Way Home is in any way a self help book. But reading about Caroline and Gail, their lives and stories, encourages us to better understand our own. Beautifully written, incisive, and funny, Let's Take the Long Way Home is a book to savor.

ISBN-10: 0812979117 - Paperback $ 14.00
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 9, 2011), 224 pages.
Review copy provided by the publisher and TLC Book Tours.

Gail Caldwell has written a beautiful and very heartfelt book of friendship between women. She captures the importance and depth of such a relationship.

Originally, she and Caroline (Knapp) connect through the common bond of their love of dogs. Over the following years Gail and Caroline become the best of friends, experiencing many life situations, serious issues, and remain connected through it all.

There is strength in numbers. When we are young we don't realize the ease with which we have of making friends. School, our neighborhood, church, clubs and functions all offer opportunities to make friends. As we age, we connect through employment, parenting situations, clubs, social scenes, and of course the many technological opportunities. But it is more difficult to find time to make the real, deep, intense connection of true friendship, as we once did.

"Let's Take the Long Way Home" is a tribute to Gail and Caroline, and a gift to all women and their friendships, highlighting the importance of this female bond and its effect on our lives. This book is meant to be read and shared. I fully recommend that women read and savor this book. Appreciate it, and your women friends. If you are blessed with a special one, let her know...now.

I know I was in tears plenty of times in the second half of this book and yet it's not a traditional tear-jerker. I see it now as more a story of recovery (I could not understand the section on alcoholism being included here until I understood it as another recovery). More than anything, I was taken by the level of friendship between two authors: Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp. I kept thinking how deeply satisfying a friendship at that level would be, something I have not known. I knew ahead of time that this was a story of loss - both, as it turns out, human and animal - and I was somewhat prepared. The beautiful writing is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time but I feel better for the tears it brought. For me, the book boils down to one memorable sentence: "The real trick is to let life, with all its ordinary missteps and regrets, be consistently more mysterious and alluring than the end."

I don't typically read memoirs, but there were a number of components to this one that I could relate to. First and foremost, the theme of friendship resonated with me and made me reflect on my most precious relationships. Gail narrates her unique friendship with Caroline and explores how Caroline's death affects her. Other aspects I could connect with were Caroline and Gail as writers, drinkers and dog lovers, although Gail's diatribe on her own recovery as an alcoholic was a bit tedious and did not contribute to the overall narrative. It seemed to be her own version of Caroline's acclaimed book, Drinking: A Love Story. The conclusion is extremely emotional, although, admittedly, I was more upset by the fate of Gail's dog then by Caroline's demise. Gail's observations and commentary are relevant and often poetic, but there were also times when I wished she'd elaborated more on events in her and Caroline's relationship. Overall, it was moving tribute to Caroline's memory and a testimony of true friendship.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Goodreads First Reads program.

This is a beautifully written book. Its not just the story of two women and how they found friendship. Its about all friendships between women. From the beginning I found myself wanting to quote passages to various friends, to share the insights found in this book, to marvel at the sisterhood that can be found between strangers. Its also not just a book about how one person loses her friend-- its a book about grief...not how to survive it, but how we're not alone in how we must endure it. The familiarity of her loss, how it mirrored losses in my own life, the way she was able to put into words what I could only feel. This writer is a marvel and the story of her friendship and the loss of it is a gift.

I don't often savor the books I read, returning to re-read portions simply to more fully take in the beauty of the words, but this is a book I took my time with and sat, contemplating, the closed book in my hands, long after I finished.

Being no more than a hick from the Texas Panhandle (as described in the book), I am amazed that this slight tome is able to contain such an array of sagacious enlightenment. WOW! Serenely told, the author takes us for the (social) ride of our lives in demonstrating the vastness of love and intimacy between two people in which neither sex nor blood (family) play a role as she describes the sort of "soul mate" for which most of us would, yes, kill.

Gail Caldwell and Carolyn Knapp meet and find friendship in the mid 90's while performing the "pedestrian" task of walking their dogs. This activity, however, is not to be taken lightly. It forms the foundation by which their relationship soars. Two people from such seemingly diverse backgrounds may never have ended up with so much in common (single by choice, love of dogs, athleticism, writing, recovery from alcoholism, etc). As is confided early in the book, Ms. Knapp falls to the ravages of cancer in 2002.

Ms. Caldwell's thought provoking narrative is the book's strength. It deftly describes both the joys of friendship as well as the anguish of intolerable loss and is as heartwarming as it is devastating. This book is not so much to be read as absorbed. Very highly recommended.

The pain attached to death and mourning is so universal that countless writers have explored it. Whether it's the loss of a spouse, or a parent, or a child -- even a pet -- it's easy to find both fiction and non-fiction devoted to it. Interestingly, the impact of death on the friend who is left behind doesn't seem to be the subject of many books.

This one talks about it unsparingly. It may just be the chick lit version of Bears great Gale Sayers' I Am Third, which includes moving passages about his legendary friendship with Brian Piccolo. Does that sound dismissive? I don't mean it to be. To this day, "Brian's Song" can make me well up. And as a woman, I was moved to read such beautiful writing in homage of the pain attached to losing the friendship of an imperfect, talented, complicated, grown up woman.

There's much joy in this book, too. It's a celebration of friendship, of support and being supported, of sobriety, and the human-animal bond, and creativity, and fresh air and exercise ... of everything these two women shared that made their friendship so rich.

Don't read this book if you have recently lost a good friend and/or your dog. I curled up on the couch to read this book and finished it in one day. At one point my husband found me sobbing, tearing through a box of tissues and so upset that I couldn't even verbalize why. I recently lost a good friend to kidney cancer, and I really miss her so this book resonated with me in may ways, learning about her cancer diagnosis, experiencing the hospital stays, and finding the right words to say. I totally lost all control over my emotions when the author, who had all ready lost her friend, was at the vet's office saying goodbye to her dog. Her last words to her oh-so faithful, obedient, well-trained dog were, "Go to Caroline." How heartbreaking was that? For me, very.

I enjoyed the insight into such a wonderfully close (non-lesbian) relationship between two seemingly marvelous women, and their attachments to their dogs. I disagree with the reviewers who are critical of Caldwell's writing abilities because I found her style to be poignant and moving. A couple of reviewers hinted that perhaps the book should be entitled "All about Me" but let's face it - it is a memoir, and a very good one.

This is not a book for many men, and yet there is something to be learned from the tight bond these women had - a prime example being that they would visit for the entire day and as soon as they went home they would call each other on the telephone. And on the subject of men, I found the hints of Caldwell's apparent disdain for men to be soft enough, but it is clear that at best they are creatures of minimal importance to her. Take note - this woman is not marriage material!

Two intensely private writers who are also fiercely independent meet one day on a dog walk.

They had actually briefly met once before at a writers' event some years earlier, but on this day, their real journey begins, as they walk their dogs.

They connect on many levels: Gail Caldwell, the author of this memoir of friendship, is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer; Caroline Knapp had written a book that chronicled her struggles with alcohol. First they connect over their love of dogs and then with their writing journeys and their loneliness. Later, Caldwell will also share her own odyssey with alcohol.

Caldwell grew up in the Texas Panhandle and then fled to various cities before finally settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Knapp grew up. In midlife, they have both settled in here and this is where their friendship journey takes off.

Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship circles from when they met back to their various separate journeys and reveals a bit about their relationships, their successes, their challenges--and then zeroes in on the time they begin the friendship. What happens after the friendship has cemented itself is the biggest challenge they will face together: Knapp's diagnosis of Stage Four lung cancer. That particular challenge will require all the strength they each have, but will also show the solidity of their friendship.

Through the days and nights leading up to Knapp's death, we are gifted with those thoughts and feelings that only someone on this particular journey can feel. Afterwards, we visit the loss, the challenges, even the events related to the dogs...and these moments carry us into the very heart of those feelings. Near the end of this tale, Caldwell writes something that I found wonderfully true: "I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. Sometimes I think that the pain is what yields the solution. Grief and memory create their own narrative...."

And then Caldwell begins again, but as with all memorable friendships, she is forever shaped and altered by the bonds that connected the two of them.

I thought the book was lovely. The author has a nice, fluid style of writing. How blessed to have found ea. other, and later in life. Friendships like this are rarely formed after middle school or high school. I have never been blessed to have this kind of relationship. Their devotion to their dogs, and their sports, rowing and swimming.. their shared past of alcoholism. I warn you, the last quarter of the book is a tearjerker. Big tears streaming down my face. When her beloved dog was dying and she told her to "Go, go find Caroline" I lost it. Having lost 2 people I love to cancer in the last 2 yrs, it hit really bard. To me the mark of a great book is one I could reread cover to cover, immediately after reading it the first time. I could do that with this book.

This is a very complex review for me to write. I was very underwhelmed by this book. But, in truth, there is nothing really wrong with it. Some might love it.

From my personal perspective I did not connect very much with the author's style of writing. When one goes through such a crushing loss emotions seem to run straight to the most basic and guttural part of you. Many times our souls cry out with the only words they can find, which are basic and primal. This author expressed her pain in such flowery sentiments that I found them ringing hollow to me. At one point the author quotes herself in speaking to a friend on the phone directly, "They take it all. This husk of a life. And then you get to the end and you find out that death is godless, imminent, and cruel". I found it very hard to imagine someone in the depths of sorrow saying something so carefully planned out and penned as if for a future novel.

Also, this book is a bit mis-categorized as a "Memoir of Friendship" since I felt there was as much personal story about the author's life before she met her friend and a LOT of story about her relationship with dogs. I would more likely categorize this book in a three way split between those three topics.

Not for me, but not a bad book.

Let's Take the Long Way Home is a memoir that covers less than a decade of Gail Caldwell's career and personal life. Gail is a writer's writer and she's lived a writer's life. She's the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe where she wrote for more than 20 years. With a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (2001), this is not her first memoir and it's not so much about her as it is about her friend Caroline and their friendship based on the bonds of their canine companions. Caroline Knapp (the author of Drinking: A Love Story) became Gail's neighbor, dog walking buddy, and friend; they shared their love of books. Knapp was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and dies.

"It's an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too." So Caldwell opens her real life story.

They met over their dogs. Gail learned to row and Caroline to swim because Gail swam and Caroline rowed. Two private, self-reliant writers came to be friends and this story is a memoir of true friendship.

"It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur and epiphany of one-way dialogue," (p. 123). Caldwell's use of timing -- the rhythms, beats and pacing of her prose -- keep most of the narrative in the "showing" -- the doing, the action. Yet when she "tells," she has something to say.

The story she tells is how to let the heart break open. "I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ...We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow." (p. 182)

Take out the tissues because you'll need them. I've read many memoirs and I didn't expect this "memoir of friendship" to touch me so. I have nothing in common with the two women who take up much in this book. I've never even had a female best friend that I connected to in such a way. Still, the writing, the friendship, was incredible. And living vicariously through the character's ups...and downs was an amazing, unforgettable experience. What drew me to the book? I'd read a good review in my favorite magazine and my male best friend and I used to always say "Let's Take the Long Way Home" so I knew just what the title meant.

Just finished reading the book, which now has tons of underscores for passages that moved me.

That said, my primary feeling when done was: I want more information about Caroline! Much, much more. She seemed like a ghost in this tale of friendship. I wanted, and expected, to really hear more about her as herself, and not just as she met Gail's needs for friendship. To me, Gail came across as too focused on how her life improved because of Caroline. Yes, she did indicate what she loved about her, but somehow, it just seemed one-sided.

Granted, one friend cannot speak for another. However, I had expected this book to be better balanced. Far less about the author (far, far less about her alcoholic past, that's for sure, though I get that she had to go into it because she shared this life experience, as did Caroline and it was a part of their connection.), who, quite frankly, was not all that interesting to me personally--which does not mean the author isn't interesting (I'm just not big on AA stuff.). Perhaps this is because I don't own a dog and I don't row. Lots of time spent talking about dog ownership, rowing, hiking in woods...things this city woman does not do.

It seemed to me that the author was better able to express her relationship and affection for her own dog, Clementine, and the grief she felt for Clementine, than she could for Caroline. I did not "get" a real sense of the author being forthcoming about her feelings about Caroline's death.

What did resonate was that there was genuine caring on both parts, and genuine connection. I do believe these two women had an exceptional relationship with each other. That said, I'm not sure the author really captured that in the book. To be fair, I don't know if anyone really could. Closeness is not something that can always be explained or noted. It just IS.

It was a quick read so I don't regret the time spent with it and as I said, there were bits and pieces (often out of the mouths of others) that I jotted down. As a reminder of the deep power of connection and love that can exist between female friends, it was worth the read. But in the end, I don't feel like I really knew the one character, Caroline, I wanted to know. Maybe that was the author's intention.

Gail Caldwell claims to have written a book about how she dealt with the death of a friend. Funny, most of the book is just about her life. The two of them are loners and misfits. Their lives are boring. Did I mention how many times she tells us she lives in Cambridge,MA? Why are we reading this? Don't waste your time.

"Everything about death is a cliché until you're in it."

Gail Caldwell hits the bull's eye time after time. This is the remarkably well-written story of a deep friendship between two women who had so much in common but who yet were an unlikely match simply because they were both so intensely, almost painfully, private. (This is in spite of Caroline Knapp's having written two "personal" books. An author can tell her story while reserving substantial chunks of herself. A really close friend cannot.)

The relationship between the women--and their dogs, of course, always the dogs--comes into such sharp focus that everything else, everyONE else, recedes into the background. This is a beautiful story of friendship and loss. Highly recommended.

I just finished this book, and absolutely loved it! It's a beautiful, raw account of a profound connection between two women (and their dogs), and the grief of the author when her closest friend dies.

I found the writing style wonderfully fluid and organic, and many sections just had to be reread to fully absorb the beauty or poignancy of the insight. It is definitely a tearjerker; I cried through the last half of it but I would not let that deter you! Even though the grief of the author is brutally raw at times, I think it speaks to all of us who have lost.

This is definitely a book I will not hesitate to recommend.

I had previously read and very much liked two of Carline Knapp's books, "Drinking: A Love Story", and "Pack of Two". (Being a single woman fond of drinking and dogs probably helped.) I was shocked when I heard she had died so young. So when I stumbled upon Gail Caldwell's memoir of their friendship, I bought it. It went on one of the many stacks of books around my house. I finally got to it a few days ago and finished it last night (weepily snuggled between my two aging dogs). I only bother writing something about books I really hate or those I love, and I really loved this one. Caldwell does a masterful job of describing the great comfort and mystery of a deep and abiding friendship between strong, introspective, generous, and of course, flawed women. And of how we cope with great loss and try to find meaning in death. I was moved by Gail & Caroline's devotion to one another and to their dogs. Beautifully written and highly recommended.

I bought this when it was released. Easily the best book I've ever read about a human's friendship with their dog - and with a friend who's a fellow dog owner. Extraordinary and beautiful. Highest possible recommendation.

This is such a beautiful memoir about Caroline Knapp.
Knapp and Caldwell are two independent writers who love their dogs and their privacy. Caldwell tells stories about her friend, sharing her humor and her love and her strength. It's about the closeness of friends, death, loss, wisdom and sharing it all, life-changing emotional connection. A memorable, enjoyable read.

Other good ones:

FOR ONE MORE DAY

EXPLOSION IN PARIS

THE BOY WHO CAME BACK FROM HEAVEN

THE FIVE PEOPLE WE MEET IN HEAVEN

I WILL WAIT FOR YOU; ETERNAL BLISS

I wanted to like this memoir and read it twice, the second time through more slowly and carefully than the first time. This is Gail Caldwell's book. Even though it is ostensibly about a best friend, years younger than she, and also a writer. Caroline Knapp had written for the Boston Phoenix and had books out about overcoming a drinking addiction; and one about dogs. To her credit, Caldwell is frank about her relationship with Caroline--she describes herself as being older and a more seasoned writer: she wants and expects Caroline to acknowledge that. After all, she had won the Pulitzer for criticism in 2001. She has to be better. In fact, the competition between the two which Caldwell talks about seems to be weighed in her favor. The book is uneven and reels back and forth between the friendship, Caldwell's own drinking problems and her relationship with her own dog, Clementine. Was it her editors who wanted to ensure that she include these parts in order to balance out the books written earlier by Caroline? Or was it due to the competition Caldwell felt towards Knapp that makes her get HER drinking and dog stories included in this book, although it is ostensibly supposed to be about the friendship with and loss of Caroline. I found that there's less about Caroline and what happens to her than I would have liked to know about--more description of the days leading up to her death; about the relationship with a man called only by his last name, Morelli, whom Knapp marries once she learns she is dying. Caroline's twin sister, Becca, is only mentioned a couple of times, as is her famous psychoanalytic father. Why aren't THEY more the central figures in this story? Caldwell seems to pride herself on nit-picky things that she knew about Caroline that others did not (such as her liking tapes of "Survivor.") The relationship between Gail and Caroline is also revealed when Caroline learns of her fatal diagnosis and asks Gail, "Are you mad at me?"

Gail is proud of the fact that Knapp leaves her precious scull to her, although Morelli asks for the oars when they move it from Caroline's boathouse after her death. She also can't keep herself from emphasizing a second time in the book that the loss of the scull seat which Caroline was annoyed with Caldwell about was an "accident," not being content to leave it alone from the first description of the event. These incidents highlight what seem to be Gail's inability to let things go, a desire to be right all the time, and to have known Caroline better than anyone else.

Now, I'm going to read Caroline Knapp's books. And to see what Caldwell might be comparing herself to. In one touching scene, Caldwell describes herself to her therapist, asking if her personality is "too much." I thus hesitate to suggest that in this memoir, there's "too much" of Caldwell and not enough of Knapp, her family, and her husband. What, I wonder, does Caroline's family think about this story about one woman's grief, louder and more demanding than any other?

An amazingly well-written and lovely book. Heartbreaking but uplifting at the same time. A storyline that will pull you in whether you’re a dog lover or someone who has lost the dearest of friends, or both. It’s a book I’ll read more than once, which is rare.

Reviewed by Claudia Kawczynska, Editor-in-chief, The Bark

Intensely moving, without a hint of sentimentality, Let's Take the Long Way Home--part memoir and part biography of a friendship--should be read and cherished by dog lovers and readers of my magazine, The Bark. Gail Caldwell is a fiercely private, independent, talented writer (with a Pulitzer Prize for criticism) and a dog enthusiast. So, when a dog trainer commented that she reminded her of another Cambridge writer who also had a new puppy, and added that she should try to get together with her, Caldwell wisely heeded the advice. What followed was the making of a remarkable relationship with Caroline Knapp (author of Pack of Two), one based not only on personality similarities but on the trust each of them--both reserved women--placed in the other, allowing them to open up and choose to take the "long way home" together.

Be prepared for tears from the book's opening, which starts with Knapp's death and the observation that "grief is what tells you who you are alone," to its end, which closes with the knowledge that "the universe insists that what is fixed is also finite." But this isn't a maudlin tale, nor is it overtly expository like many memoirs can be; rather, it is revelatory, joyous and inspiring. Caldwell expertly draws the reader into her story as a hard-driving feminist from Amarillo, Texas, who saw "drinking as an anesthetic for high-strung sensitivity and a lubricant for creativity," then realized that surrendering her addiction was a "way to get back all your power."

When Knapp enters her circle, Caldwell notes (reflecting on the first of their many long dog walks), "Even on that first afternoon we spent together--a four-hour walk through late-summer woods--I remember being moved by Caroline: It was a different response from simple affection or camaraderie. ... I found it a weightless liberation to be with someone whose intensity seemed to match and sometimes surpass my own." Both shared deep bonds with their dogs--Caldwell with Clementine, a Samoyed, Knapp with Lucille, a Shepherd mix--both had stopped drinking at age 33, and both had early health problems. They also traded sports passions--Caldwell's for swimming and Knapp's for rowing.

But, "everything really started with the dogs." The two women reveled in unlocking the mysteries of canine behavior and in the triumphs earned through polishing their training skills. Theirs was a tight, close friendship, the kind that calls to mind Polonius's counsel to "grapple them [friends] to thy soul with hoops of steel." Caldwell generously allows the reader into their most intimate moments, including when Knapp learned of the cancer diagnosis, her last months in the hospital, and the brief reprieve when Knapp married her long-time companion, Mark Morelli, with Lucille as their ring bearer and Caldwell as her "humble handler."

On a personal note, I must share with you the jolt I felt when I read about Caroline in the hospital, telling Gail that the only assignment she hadn't been able to finish was one I'd given her ("a dog lover's magazine" in the book). Caroline was slated to contribute to Bark's first anthology, "Dog Is My Co-Pilot". I was thrilled when she offered to write an essay and eagerly awaited it; news of her death (which I learned of through a New York Times obituary) came the day her essay was due. As Caroline asks Gail, "What am I supposed to write about ... the only thing worse than losing your dog is knowing that you won't outlive her?"

As it is, with Caroline Knapp's Pack of Two, and now with her best friend's enthralling "pack of four" memoir, both their stories will endure, classics that outlive us all.

This is a well written memoir about a sad time in two friends lives, both for the survivor and the friend who is terminally ill and dies quite quickly after receiving the grim diagnosis. I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't really end up caring about either woman. Maybe because I was never an alcoholic, I can't identify with some of what they did or who they were. But I don't really think that was it. I keep thinking about Joan Didion's book "The Year of Magical Thinking" and how much more that drew me into her and her grief and made her so much more a three dimensional person to me. This book also reminded me of the book written a few years ago by Carolyn Radizwill about her seeing her young husband through his final illness. She too was someone I cared so much more about than this author. Caldwell tries to convince me she cared deeply for her friend, Caroline, but I was never really convinced. While I can admire her writing talent the book itself left me cold.

Years ago Carolyn Knapp was interviewed by Dan Gotley on "voices from the family". I taped that interview the 2nd time it aired, because it was so moving. I read her book and gave it to a few people as gifts. I often wondered what happened to her.

It was by coincidence that I picked up this book and found the missing pieces of Carolyn. I found myself wishing to have been part of this amazing friendship.

Thank you for sharing your story.

A moving description of the deep, shared, friendship between two women, and the author's coming to terms with her grief and loss. Though I almost lost interest during the appx. 30 page detour into Caldwell's prior period of alcoholism, overall I found her writing engaging, poetic, honest, and illuminating. I found myself slowing down during the second part of the book, wanting to absorb her transformative moments and insights. The book would have been even better if it had been a little more flushed out in celebration of the bond they shared, i.e. more vignettes, anecdotes, or idiosyncrasies about their relationship and its uniqueness.

I wept my way through this memoir; it was a very cathartic experience for me and beautifully written. I love Gail Caldwell's ability to describe feelings exactly as I feel them! Wonderful book if you've ever lost someone dear (including pets)...'

I had just given up on reading due to time constraints, but got this book for Christmas. The prose was so heart wrenching that is was as if I was reading page after page of poetry. I have probably never been as moved by a book in my adult life as this. If you have loved someone and then lost them, you will feel a kinship and a gratitude that someone else can evoke what you have felt. READ THIS NOW..you will be so glad you did.

Being your prototypical male, wasnt sure what to expect or how I would react to this book about two close, female friends. Well, no worry. It is a touching tale of the depth a friendship can take, the joys and heart aches too. Very nicely written. While it could be a quick easy read, you'll want to savor and ponder different parts. Highly recommend.

This is a wonderful love story of two women friends, how they met and connected with each other with only having their dogs in common at first. The friendship continued for 20 years. It was a very fast read, I finished in a day

Check out the full review at Kritters Ramblings

An honest look at friendships between women - a relationship that should hold just as much value as the one between spouses. My mom always told me that your significant other can not be your only relationship, they can't be everything for you. This book drove that lesson home page after page.

A very touching and well-written memoir. At first I thought it was too much about the author, but reading further into the book I realized she was only giving a back-story, preparing the reader for a heart wrenching view of friendship. I'm not sure if I was more affected by the loss of Caroline or of Clementine.

There will be no doubt that this was a remarkable friendship or that experiencing the death of a friend that one is so tightly bound to is a traumatic and almost poetic ordeal.It may be looked upon as spitting on the grave of that friend to speak ill of the tribute to that ode to friendship, but spit I must. The book simply doesn't pack the punch the relationship must have. It is, for the most part, a series of chapters about dog walking, rowing, swimming, and talking earnestly on the phone. True, both women were recovering alcoholics, but both had already quit drinking when the book begins. Caroline's cancer is barely a footnote at the end. her death a single chapter. The emotional impact of both the friendship and the aftermath would have been better served in shorter form.

I sailed through this book like a skilled rower on the water. I have a great many wonderful girlfriends and I would recommend it to them all--we should all be so blessed as Gail. I don't want to give any of this story away except to say that even as a cat person I am now considering life with a dog...and I am certain I need to cherish and stay in better touch with all the women in my life.

This is a wonderful love story of two women friends, how they met and connected with each other with only having their dogs in common at first. The friendship continued for 20 years. It was a very fast read, I finished in a day

Check out the full review at Kritters Ramblings

An honest look at friendships between women - a relationship that should hold just as much value as the one between spouses. My mom always told me that your significant other can not be your only relationship, they can't be everything for you. This book drove that lesson home page after page.

A very touching and well-written memoir. At first I thought it was too much about the author, but reading further into the book I realized she was only giving a back-story, preparing the reader for a heart wrenching view of friendship. I'm not sure if I was more affected by the loss of Caroline or of Clementine.

There will be no doubt that this was a remarkable friendship or that experiencing the death of a friend that one is so tightly bound to is a traumatic and almost poetic ordeal.It may be looked upon as spitting on the grave of that friend to speak ill of the tribute to that ode to friendship, but spit I must. The book simply doesn't pack the punch the relationship must have. It is, for the most part, a series of chapters about dog walking, rowing, swimming, and talking earnestly on the phone. True, both women were recovering alcoholics, but both had already quit drinking when the book begins. Caroline's cancer is barely a footnote at the end. her death a single chapter. The emotional impact of both the friendship and the aftermath would have been better served in shorter form.

I sailed through this book like a skilled rower on the water. I have a great many wonderful girlfriends and I would recommend it to them all--we should all be so blessed as Gail. I don't want to give any of this story away except to say that even as a cat person I am now considering life with a dog...and I am certain I need to cherish and stay in better touch with all the women in my life.

If you have never loved another person, or loved a dog, then stop here. This book is not for you! This is the best book I have read this year. It tells of the intimate relationship of two women and their dogs. The writing is beautiful, loving and easily read. Read it, you will not be able to put it down. It is not a girlie girlie book. Both my wife and I loved the perfect storytelling.

"Let's..." is the best chronicle of the relationship between two women I have read to date. Gail Caldwell got it right when she waited for her grief to percolate before pouring us a rich brew of the truths that make up relationships. I am better prepared by her gift.

This book entailed so much of human experience and Caldwell put her words forth in a gentle,real way. I loved her writing and the dogs added a touch to the story. When Gail said "catch", I was crying and smiling at the same time. I didn't want the book to end and I look forward to reading her again.

Well, let's see. I started this book less than 24 hours ago and I just finished it. It is a gorgeous book. The first line:

"It's an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that too."

Courageous, brave. I loved this book.

I wanted to like it, because the reviews said it would be so good. I guess I had high expectations that were too much. I expected something more about her friend, something that really dug deep at the core of their friendship. I wasn't moved to tears and nothing warmed my heart--this was basically what I was looking for. What it was was a very calm book, and it trailed off to include too much about subjects I had a hard time trying to get myself to listen to. To be completely blunt, I don't know why I would want to learn about how long it took for her to find her dog's breeder.
Basically, there was a little bit too much about her individual life, sometimes bits that aren't interesting to this particular reader, and not as much as their friendship as I would have liked.

I picked up this book because I am strugging with grieving the loss of a loved one and thought perhaps reading about another person's struggle with losing a loved one. I found it very hard to get into the first half of the book that covers the friendship from meeting to Caroline's cancer diagnosis. There just wasn't enough feeling for me. It was well written but lacked a certain something the reader needs to feel more connected to the book. The second half was much better and had me in tears at some points. I would have enjoyed more about the grieving and how she overcame it (or if she is still struggling with it and how it affects her life). I also enjoyed the parts with the dogs, as a dog lover and owner myself.

A friend loaned me this book and I couldn't put it down. Rarely has a writer touched me to the degree that Ms Caldwell does with her stunning prose. Her mastery of the English language is truly remarkable.

Time and again I tried to read passages to my partner, but was too choked with emotion to be able to. Ms Caldwell writes so beautifully and candidly of her friendship with Caroline, their love of sports and their dogs, but also her own battle with alcoholism.

I plan to purchase several copies of this memoir when it comes out in paperback. Several friends will be receiving it for birthdays and Christmas.

This book was a story of friendship, both with her girlfriend and her dog. Reading it is not a bad way to spend a few hours of your time. I thought it was pretty good and it kept me interested (even though I don't like dogs).

This touching story of Friendship makes me envious I've not had a relationship like theirs! It is a lovely story of two women who share their lives and love their dogs. Loss and grief are explored when one of the women succumbs to lung cancer, leaving the other alone to grieve, ponder life and the relationship past, and to move on with HER life. Athleticism plays a large part in this story and helps to bond the women.

I chose this book because of it's simple title, reminiscent of calmer days. Loved the author's sensitive approach to a poignant friendship, and loss, between two complex women and their dogs. Excellent, insightful, book, and well written.

Loss. Someday we all experience it. Gail was able to give me something solid that made sense of loss; Like a rope tossed into an abyss that you can pull back toward yourself with life affirming gifts attached. Each gift more precious than the last but priceless and irreplaceable. Thank you Gail.

I found the first 50 pages of this book--marking the start of the author's friendship with Caroline Knapp--dry and even static. Despite Caldwell's considerable writing skill, the two women just don't entirely come to life. And then ... author Caldwell gets into her history of alcoholism and, bang, things acquire color and start to feel real. I couldn't help wondering if there was an editorial intercession when the author was asked to rearrange portions of the book so that the advent of the friendship came before the much-needed introduction to the woman telling the tale. In any case, from that point on the book becomes a lot fuller. But still Caroline remains a somewhat shadowy entity--someone who smokes, and rows on the river, and loves dogs, and a fellow called Morelli--but she doesn't leap fully fleshed from the page. Ironically, Caldwell's Samoyed, Clementine, is realer and more alive on the pages of this book than Caroline. It is a valiant effort, a lovesong to friendship. But the most vivid section of the book is a description of the author and her dog being set upon by a pair of pit bulls. The adrenaline is all there; the writing is a heart pumping away in triple time. There is a razor-sharp contrast between the terrifying recreation of the dog attack and the rather limpid depiction of the loss of Caldwell's best friend. In the end, I cared more about the loss of Clementine ... and I am not a dog person. So that says something about the uneven quality of the narrative--which is unfortunate.

Beautifully written example of what it is to grieve of a great loss.
Although about death of a friend, anyone who has lost
a great love will relate. If you read, Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
this book brings that story full circle. Amazing tribute to friendship.
Thoroughly enjoyed this read.

This is a well written book. The writer, however, lacks the ability to convey feeling. She conveys facts but does not bring anything to life. It is clear that Caldwell may be an excellent critic but she is not a writer it the creative sense.

In addition, it seems what she really wanted to write about here was her own alcoholism but, realizing this would be in bad taste given that her deceased friend wrote a successful memoir about her own alcoholism, Caldwell disguises this as a book about a friendship. It ends up being a confused book without focus.

Read this a few years ago and jumped at the chance to buy the Kindle version recently; it's definitely worth a re-read. Gail Caldwell's memoir of her friendship with Caroline Knapp is a beautifully written story of the friendship between the two women before Knapp's death. I strongly recommend it.

A BOOK TO REMEMBER. Reaches the most sensitive places of the heart: love, kindness, giving, understanding and all that goes with caring. A two box tissue affair. A quick read but full of "meat". One wants to finish it at the start. Well written.

The book covered more about her being an alcoholic than a friendship. The book described a great friendship, but I didn't "feel" the friendship only the loss. I was really disappointed that you didn't find yourself "in love" with the characters. I enjoy books that describe a friendship that you feel you are part of, or that matches the friendships you already have.

Don't regret reading but wouldn't purchase or read again.

Sorry, I found this book to be less about a friendship and dogs and more about the authors own self-absorbed, and for the first half, alcohol-soaked memories. The use of "milieu" three times in two chapters? I found it sort of dull and tiresome.

This book was a long tale of "woe is me". The book is a downer and leaves the reader feeling like they just wasted alot of time and a few bucks. It's nothing more than someone's diary and not very interesting.

Sorry, but I do not understand how this book is getting such good reviews. I am an avid book reader and this one left me without even finishing it. Could not get into the characters, very dryly written, boring.

From the first page of Let's Take the Long Way Home, the reader knows that Gail and Caroline were best friends, and that Caroline is now dead. It casts a shadow over the book. The reader knows, when Gail is talking about their happiest times, that she will lose Caroline. As a result, this is just as much a memoir of loss as it is one of the best of friendships.

It's easy to understand why Gail and Caroline connected so quickly - both unmarried, both writers, both alcoholics, both in committed relationships with their dogs - they have a lot in common. It's wonderful to see them teach each other, learn from each other, and come to depend on one another more and more as the book progresses. On every page, you can feel the love that Gail felt for Caroline, and how much she is mourning her loss.

Let's Take the Long Way Home is also very beautifully written. Caldwell is a talented writer, and it's clear that she poured her heart out into this book. In a lot of ways, it's not just a story of a friendship, but a love story about two kindred spirits that were lucky enough to find one another. Caldwell feels Caroline's death as much as she'd feel the death of a spouse. It's really heartbreaking, and yet Caldwell's writing is so gorgeous that it somehow helps. It makes it easier to bear.

This is a slip of a book, and a very quiet one at that. It's not a memoir of shocking revelations or adventure. It's just a small story about two people who were best friends until one of them died. Caroline couldn't have asked for a better tribute, or a better friend to accompany her to the end of her life.

"Let's..." is the best chronicle of the relationship between two women I have read to date. Gail Caldwell got it right when she waited for her grief to percolate before pouring us a rich brew of the truths that make up relationships. I am better prepared by her gift.

Penetration is a word I rarely use, yet seems just right here. Two gifted writers, with personal boundaries we can understand from their earlier lives, are slowly able to let their connection grow into deep sisterhood, penetrating all parts of their lives. Remarkable is this friendship - and remarkable is Caldwell’s sharing of it. A most precious book to give many women friends.