Lorna, I heart you! I just finished the best book!

Lorna Landvik, I heart you so deeply. In the most appropriate way of course.

I just finished The View from Mount Joy. This book. THIS book is so wonderful. So fresh. So sweet. I loved it from beginning to end, and was kinda mad at old Lorna for ending the story.

The book's protagonist is Joe Andreson, a Minnesota home town boy who in a George Bailey-esque (but-not-as-bitter-as-George-Bailey) never really leaves to do the things he envisioned himself doing in life. The novel follows Joe from his class of '72 stint as a school newspaper reporter/hockey star to about the present time. Joe is an every day guy, but he lives an extraordinary life. He faces real life tragedy and loss, as well as incredible blessing and joy. What grabs me so much about this story is the way Landvik paints his humility and his optimism in his relationships with other folks. His family, both in the narrow sense of the nuclear family and in the broad sense of community is everything to him. If you're looking for a plot-filled novel in the extreme, this is not the book for you. Rather, The View from Mount Joy is more of a character-driven look at one man's life amidst unexpected circumstances. It may sound very predictable, and in that sense, it IS a plot-filled book--not predictable. What becomes predictable is that one wishes Joe were her neighbor or friend.

Probably one of my favorite books in the last 5 years.