It's been a bit since I've reviewed a book. I lost my reading mojo this year, only reading half of what I normally do and losing interest in what I've started. Pandemic Year 2 and it still sucks. I finally got my first vacation in 17 months and realized that I had barely taken off work since then. My only days off were medical procedures or sick days. Yeesh.
For vacation this year, we went to Tennessee, renting a cabin in the woods. I loved it. Besides some touristy stuff during the day, evenings were spent knitting or reading. I brought along The Sunset Route by Carrot Quinn, a book pick from the Fantastic Stranglings Book Club from Nowhere Bookshop, and ended up finishing it in 2 days. I'm honestly surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did!
I was both horrified and entranced. Carrot's (né Jennifer) upbringing was so full of abuse, poverty, and hurt that I am honestly surprised she made it out in one piece. She brings in the light in her life when the book starts getting too heavy, it's really well done to make the reader not want to throw in the towel and cry for the little girl. Carrot's mother, Barbara, is a schizophrenic who thinks she's the Virgin Mary. She neglects her kids, Jennifer and Jordan, sinks them into poverty in Alaska, and abuses them on a regular basis. Carrot describes all of this with detail that hurts your heart.
"Thankfully" the kids get adopted by their grandparents, Barbara's parents, and move to Colorado. I know the grandparents weren't worse, per se, but damn. Carrot gets out early and works odd jobs to make ends meet to stay afloat. She decides to head to Portland, OR with a family member and there.... I guess you could say her life begins, if you are dramatic. I am, so her life begins.
The lightness of the book consists of Carrot and friends hitchhiking and riding the trains back and forth across the country. They make the money they need to survive, dumpster dive for food, and shoplift other items as needed. They essentially have no home, but they do. Wherever they end up, they find a home, shelter, somewhere to sleep. Carrot has kept on living this life, living out of her van with her 2 dogs, traveling back and forth between Alaska and the desert.
Initially, all I kept thinking was "I have too many health problems and need too much medical care to do anything like this. Besides, I love my home. And my things." So the first part is true, I'm a mess. But the other 2? I think that is what Carrot is trying to show, you don't need the material things to have a full life, to have a home, to FEEL at home. She also references being seen, or alternatively, being invisible. Some people do move through this life unseen, either because they are trying to stay invisible or because they are the type of person that people don't want to acknowledge.
The unwritten law is to not see the houseless people. To gripe about them "needing to get jobs". To not see the mentally ill, let alone provide help to them. To not believe that someone can be happy traveling around in a van with her dogs and never buying into the "American dream" of a house and picket fence.
I appreciated this book for making me think from a different direction. I appreciate Jenny Lawson for bringing Carrot to those of us who have never heard of her (she has another book!).
Carrot's Instagram - beautiful photos of nature!
“I had learned that you couldn't escape the darkness entirely, but you could learn to live above it. Grief was an ocean but you could reach the surface and bob there, where the light was.”
