This month’s pick for ‘The Book Taster’ was ‘Moon Road’ by Sarah Leipciger. This is a book which I would not have picked up without book club, I suspect, simply because there are so many books and yet so little time. However, this is a book that deserves to be on more tbr piles and wishlists, because it really is a good read.
This is a slow burn of a road trip novel, and yet it is also a mystery and a very compelling story. We journey ‘Moon Road’, which has multiple meanings as you read this book, with Yannick and Kathleen as they are on a journey to find their daughter, Una. As they take this journey together, after nineteen years since their relationship ended, their past is slowly revealed to us, one memory and conversation at a time.
We are let into their relationship, in a way they have not even been let in for quite some time. They are complex characters and, maybe, not always likeable characters, but you feel you are on the journey with them and you are really drawn into their story and build a bond with them as they follow Moon Road. I think you take on all their emotions and find yourself needing to pick up the book to find out what is going to happen next, and make sure they are okay on their adventure or journey (depending on how you look at it).
I can’t say much more about the story other than that, as it may lead to spoilers, but I can say it is a beautifully constructed story, which has one of the most haunting endings I have ever read in a novel. In fact, that ending is with me still now as I write this post, and I think it will be with me for a long time to come. And you are just going to have to read it to understand why that is.
What also made this book beautiful for me, is that it is set in Canada. I have been lucky enough to be to some of the places mentioned in the book, and this allowed me to visualise, maybe not perfectly, the surroundings they may have been travelling through, and how, with all that time isolated together, the level of reflection, and sharing of thoughts and experiences between Yannick and Kathleen would come about.