(Harper Collins, $27.99)
This book came highly recommended, but the fi rst time I picked it up it sounded depressing. A woman with cancer and her husband with Alzheimers kidnap themselves and take off on a road trip? No thanks.
Little did I know, every book I picked up afterwards was even more depressing! ourder and mayhem, death and divorce, racism and poverty – shoot me now: there’s enough of that in real life. Like a little ray of sunshine, *The **Leisure Seeker *beamed at me from the reject pile so I picked it up again and started reading.
Ella and John are “two down-on-their- luck geezers, one with more health problems than a third world country, the other so senile he doesn’t even know what day it is”. The last thing anyone thinks they should do is pack up their RV (American for campervan) and go on a cross-country road trip but they do it anyway, heading down Route 66 – the one you used to get your kicks on, but which was offi cially replaced by interstate highways in 1985.
As they travel from Detroit in the north east to Disneyland in the south west, John does the driving and Ella does the remembering, retracing the steps she and her husband and their kids have taken over so many happy holidays in the past.
Ella’s turn of phrase had me laughing out loud all the way through this tender tome. RV’s are the “cat’s ass” according to her. “When you get old, everything gets farther away. But here in the Leisure Seeker, everything’s right there where you need it.”
If you want a charming, funny, heartwarming, life-affi rming, bittersweet romantic read, this is it – but let me warn you, I cried so much at the end of this book, I couldn’t stop. The Ginger was bewildered. “What’s wrong?” he said as I howled into my pillow. “A minute ago you were laughing.”
A book that takes you from hilarity to heartbreak, plus gets you a cup of tea and a consoling chocolate biscuit in bed? Perfect.
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