The Divide – Nicholas Evans

 

When I received the latest pile of books from my mother in law, S, I was pretty sure that I recognised the name Nicholas Evans but it took me quite a while to place exactly why I knew it. It's quite a few years since I read his first novel, The Horse Whisperer, but I do clearly recall that it was one of those books that everyone at school was desperate to read. Since then I have to admit that I've not see anything else he's written, until now. 

The back cover and first chapter of The Divide made me think that I was going to be reading a crime fiction style book, but that quickly changed and instead this book actually takes the reader on an emotional roller-coaster of a ride through its pages. 

Ben and Sarah Cooper's daughter Abbie's body is found on a remote mountain side in Montana, embedded in ice. How it came to be there is a mystery, but since Abbie was on the run from the FBI for murder and eco-terrorism her parents have almost finished being surprised. The book looks back on the trip to the Divide that changed the course of the Cooper's lives for ever. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and actually felt quite disappointed when I finished it, but there were two small quibbles. Firstly (or should that be lastly), at the end of the book everything is just tied up a little too neatly. There are no loose ends. Now, I know that I sometimes complain about books that leave too many loose ends, but it almost felt unrealistic at the end in the way that everything seemed to finish neatly.

My only remaining comment is one that I can't possibly place any blame on the author for. For some very strange reason throughout the book I always kept picturing Abbie's brother Josh as the son, Chris, from Family Guy! The only logical explanation I can give is that we've been watching rather a lot of Family Guy on the TV lately, although it did make it very hard to take the character seriously…