Carrying Albert Home

Book Title: Carrying Albert Home

Author: Homer Hickam

Date Started: September 4th 2015

Date Completed: September 12th 2015

Genres: Historical, Memoir, Adventure, Romance
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thank you HarperCollins for providing me with this proof copy to review ◆

Carrying Albert Home started with an intriguing premise: a married couple, with a few problems to say the least, travelling across America during a time of economic failure - with an alligator. It sounded interesting and I was willing to try something new. Unfortunately, this book was okay but ultimately repeated the same sort of quirky stories a dozen or so times and then drew to a close.

The writing was quite suited to the book: pretty straightforward and at times quite quirky with its syntax. In the early parts of the book I really liked this, because it kind of replicated how simple the things Homer wanted were; but as we went on it didn't change at all, and things like action became very hard to follow in such basic terms. I half expected Hickam to become more thoughtful and complex with his prose as we learnt more about the characters but eventually the undemanding style became tedious.

I keep calling this book quirky - and I hope that comes across positively, because I genuinely think some people will enjoy its unusual outlook. But I have to admit, it does feel slightly optimistic to me. It's a very strange atmosphere for around the era of the Great Depression (to be honest I'm not entirely sure of the time period because quite a lot went over my head when I was trying to engage myself); putting the references to Disney and Steinbeck aside, we get quite a humorous and fun portrayal of America's dark days. Having studied various forms of history around the Wall Street Crash and it's consequences this was just bizarre and it made it very hard to concentrate on the actual action - the further detail that Carrying Albert Home is supposed to be somewhat of a memoir exaggerated just how wrong it felt for Homer and Elsie to be having such an adventure during such a crisis.

The structure of the story was very off for me too: having an episodic plot for a road trip is all well and good but when each part follows the same pattern it becomes so dull. Every time, the couple would stop off somewhere, a stranger would say something about the alligator, Elsie would wildly go and get herself into trouble so that Homer could go and get her out of it and they would have a moment where we're supposed to think 'oh maybe now they'll reconcile their marriage' - but of course they wouldn't. This was even more infuriating because of the potential there was: they had an alligator with them, surely it would've caused a few problems for them crossing borders or finding somewhere to stay; there were genuine pieces of action but so widely spread and with so little consequence it was like they never happened; they met up with multiple famous authors (something I really, really didn't like) and yet made nothing of it!

And because of this lack of meaningful or even really relevant happenings throughout the book, the ending feels unbelievable. It's pushed so hard that Elsie and Homer aren't happy together but apparently that can change in a second on the last page to resolve the story. Fair enough if this is based on a true story - and I do think based is the right word - but I don't think the progression of their marriage was portrayed in a way that really made sense of their journey or even helped me emphasise with two people I didn't like particularly at the beginning.

None of the characters felt particularly realistic to me - again for the quirkiness of the story this would have been alright had the book not claimed to be a biographical recount of Homer's (or let's be honest, it's really Elsie's) adventures. And on top of that, when I look back it's actually quite depressing how unkind the people were: Homer spends his time pining for a girl who obviously doesn't have an interest in him and keeps pushing and pushing when it isn't fair, but Elsie ignores every attempt and makes it very clear she still wants a man she hasn't seen in years. 

Homer I really wasn't a fan of: I understand he loves Elsie and wants her to be happy, but at the end of the day she does not want nor need his help and my reaction at numerous points in this book was that he needed to leave her alone.

Elsie would have been quite an interesting character is she hadn't been written so emotionlessly. She won't let herself be pushed around by men in a time when women were at a disadvantage, but at the same time when you look back everything she does it ultimately caused by the actions of the men around her. But she's so... placid? Robotic? Her dialogue especially just feels like paper rather than anything three dimensional and real.

Pacing in road trip stories has always been an issue for me; I just don't like plot lines that don't flow throughout the whole thing. It makes them really hard to get into and sometimes feels lazy and stalls consistency in character development. When that's then combined with a historical era and characters I can't relate to it just drags things out even further.

If you like road trips and 1930/40s America (like I said I wasn't paying too much attention to the time period) you might enjoy this quirky little twist on a story, but for me it just became dull. Nothing overtly wrong with it, but just not enough to really amount to anything. I personally wouldn't market this as a memoir because quite frankly it's very hard to take anything seriously if we're supposed to believe it's all true - the back of my copy even admits everything's true "except the bits that are made up."

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