In The Scenic Route (yes, it's a road trip novel), Sylvia and Henry meander by car through the new, boundaryless Europe. Sylvia shares her store of memories with Henry -- of growing up in Westchester, where the neighborhood bully killed her turtle with a hammer; her hatred for her brother Joel, her mother's death, her father's reunion with a former girlfriend her mother had hated, his later accident and loss of long-term memory.
This book was laugh out loud funny in parts (Can I have your pickle? I haven't had a vegetable all week) but also sad. Sylvia's remembering of her mother's death and sorting through her belongings was a bit too close for comfort.
It will be interesting to process this with my friends at book club - provided they actually have read the novel. Some reviewers felt that Sylvia had gained insight by the end of the novel. I agree with Publisher's Weekly that "What's crushing isn't Sylvia's secret-it's how knowledge hasn't made her wiser." She seems lost (perhaps still grieving her mother's death) and the ending left me utterly frustrated.
"we were cowards, and that was the end of that."
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