Safe Return Doubtful

This is vindication for my system of adding books to my tbr list, then (partly intentional – partly due to my memory) totally forgetting about them. Had I realised the subject matter here, I would most likely avoided it.

Lori Fitzgerald and her husband Joe are an elderly couple living near Troutbeck, just over the hill from where I lived for the last decade. Lori is up as usual one morning, making the coffee, preparing for a fell walk, but when she takes Joe his coffee she realises he is dead.

She is quite calm, and decides to take on her fell walk as usual, with the rest of the short novel following her thoughts fleeting between mulling scones, bike rides and classical music, to more weighty matters.

Like Lori’s rain-sodden hike across the fell, the book’s arduous qualities are part of its reward.
There are few places as appropriate as the fell to set one’s thoughts straight, and Arnold’s writing champions that.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5