I couldn’t help feeling disappointed [that] the novel’s exploration of prejudice and vulnerability remains incomplete ... Saunders movingly explores the difficulty of changing one’s course in the face of accumulated trauma, but the deeper implications of this rather delicate analogy to Native American experience remain unclear. Posing Leon as a subtle proxy for indigenity risks an oversimplified equivalence — unexpected in a novel sensitive to imbalance ... Still, Saunders skillfully illuminates how time heals certain wounds while deepening others, and her depiction of aging is viscerally affecting ... The Distance Home becomes a meditation on the violence of American ambition — and a powerful call for self-examination.
Paula Saunders taps her Midwestern family history in her wrenching debut novel The Distance Home, and her career in ballet gives realism and passion to the siblings’ dance classes. Ms. Saunders’ story is both easy and difficult to read – I love her fluid prose, but her saddest family scenes ring true. So do René’s hopeful, cynical introspections. Though The Distance Home is a dark story, it is a fair omen for Ms. Saunders’ future literary career.
The work’s long gestation is evident in its dexterous language and distilled wisdom ... The result is a fluid point of view that ho[m]es in on a character’s most intimate thoughts one moment and pans out to drone-like vistas the next. Like Morrison in Beloved, Saunders pulls back to panoramic historical refrains that add context. The narration functions as an offstage voice unobtrusively directing the reader’s attention ... jumps in time, which occur throughout the novel, are often illuminating, but several...feel out of step with the book’s subtlety ... We leave this tender and arresting novel asking ourselves where the cruelty of the sort depicted in 'The Lottery' exists in our lives, and whom we have sacrificed in pursuit of a better harvest.
Saunders’ debut is an exquisite, searing portrait of family and of people coping with whatever life throws at them while trying to keep close to one another. This beautifully written novel takes readers on a roller-coaster ride of emotions, delivering them to a place where painful memories live alongside hopes and dreams. The Distance Home will leave readers eager for more from this extraordinarily talented writer.
This story, and the author’s heartful understanding of it, has been deeply informing my views on class and addiction in America for 30 years. And that [Saunder's] masterful writing of it here represents an original and essential part of the American story — and especially the way family functions, or doesn’t — that I have never seen represented before. I don’t know a book that better describes the way that, as Terry Eagleton put it, 'capitalism plunders the sensuality of the body.' ... There is something remarkable and new going on here in the way point of view works, that models a true 'God’s eye' view: everyone right, everyone wrong, everyone valid.
[A] penetrating and insightful deconstruction of a Midwestern family ... Saunders brilliantly parses [the protagonists] disparate paths; they are two wildly talented, sensitive souls—one shattered by life’s circumstances, the other learning to soar above them. This debut wonderfully depicts the entire lifespan of a singular family.
