Walking Distance

In a sense, this novel is extremely haunting and fragile. However, it missed it's mark by the very smallest degree. The novel examines the love and bonds that hold families together despite the pain and circumstances that pull them apart. Laura, in love with her husband Zach since she was 14 years old, meets David while walking her daughter to school. David, dying of terminal cancer, sits under the awning of his apartment complex in New York City every day for his exercise. He is drawn to Laura because she smiles at him each time she passes. He speaks to her and the course is set for an affair. David's wife, who we are led to believe loves him and has had a happy marriage, no longer will make love with him and spends her evenings going to see movies that she's already seen several times. She begins an affair with an aging hippy she meets in a movie theater. Interspersed in this novel is Laura's 85 year old grandmother, Sofie, her young Puerto Rican friend, Aida, and Sofie's new husband, Monroe. Sofie is the most real character. We understand where she's been, the pain of her loneliness and her fear of bonding and losing her sense of self. One never gets a real sense of Laura or Zach, or for that matter David or his wife Barbara. The bittersweet affair between Sofie and David attempts to juxtapose the two lives and families but falls short because we don't really get to know the people as fully as we'd like to. Despite the novel's shortcomings, it is still well worth reading.