klaineandbiscuits:

So, a while back I was given the opportunity to read an ARC of 100 Days by Mimsy Hale (published by Interlude Press), and it would be an understatement to say that I was honoured and excited. Unfortunately, the past few months have been their own particular breed of chaos and I was unable to be as out-front and ahead of the release date as I would have liked to be.

BUT!! I’ve finally had time to curl up and finish this lush, sense-drenching story of childhood friends who share an abiding and bone-deep love but who continue to miss each other as they ricochet off each other’s amour and scars from age old wounds. This was not the first time I have read this story and it will not be the last, because when magic happens in someone’s words, the spell enchants forever. So, ON TO THE REVIEW!!!

I will start by saying that over the years I have yelled very loudly at the author about my love of her world and the depth of feeling that it drew from me, and when I began reading this I was unsure whether I would have anything new to say… But then six pages in I realized that it was indeed possible to fall more in love with 100 Days and that each subsequent reading would reveal new insights and spark new resonances with my emotions, and would always give me that delicious ache which zings between my heart and stomach, like a closed circuit of electricity, making my hands twitch and and my throat tighten with tears that sting the corners of my eyes. So too, her skill with description continues to amaze me, drawing me in and immersing me in a complex world of sense imagery, giving sight and sound and texture and scent to the places which play host to Aiden and Jake’s tale. I always emerge from a chapter as I would from a particularly vivid dream, blinking and and slightly confused that my room is not an RV parked at the edge of the Grand Canyon…

There is something universally appealing about the idea of the great American road trip—vast expanses of frontier to discover, both out in the wide world and in our own psyches, the one drawing out the other. And so this tale of Aiden and Jake begins, with the world an open atlas at their feet and the beautiful fragility of their long-time friendship teetering on the edge of so much more, with that particular brand of sadness and desperation that we all feel when things that have been constant in our lives, start to change but we don’t yet know what that change means. 

“All he knows is that something has to give, and soon.”

The chapters are layered with these beautiful moments of push and pull between two life long friends who stopped being just friends years ago but never looked up and saw each other at the same time. In the epic book of their lives, Jake is scared to move on in the story lest the early chapters full of the loving presence of his parents disappear, and Aiden can’t keep his eyes on the page in front of him, he keeps jumping forward in the hopes that the future will make more sense to him than the past. There is a beautiful agony in watching them leap and struggle to land on the same page at the same time.

“If we can’t be everything, at least we’re more.”

And as the Jake and Aiden size up the cinematic potential of the majesty and small beauties of the American landscape, it is impossible not to get swept up in the imagery, because Mimsy Hale has not just written a romance between two lifelong friends, she has written too a love letter to the vast charms of the length and breadth of the United States. 100 Days takes us on such an incredible zig zag journey along the length and breadth of the country, the effectiveness and success of which I lay at the feet of two things: Mimsy’s obvious love, reverence, and fascination with the beauty and untold possibilities of the American landscape; and her keen ability to focus on the unexpected and the easily overlooked details of places so famous as to become cliché, and on the human element that can make the most common of places become special. The author does not just take us on the usual tour of America, she gives us a tapestry of love, uncertainty, passion, disappointment, discovery, and home, all set against an ever-changing landscape—sometimes fulfilling expectations, sometimes leaving an empty moment of oh was that all?, and sometimes a reluctant destination that becomes an emotional touchstone.

Something which I found surprisingly effective was the use of real world events in elements of the story—such having Hurricane Katrina, the presidential election, and first real moves in the battle for marriage equality. The focus on these events grounds the story in time, but not in a way which will go stale or date it in years to come, more like a time capsule of large moments that in years to come older readers will nod and remember where they were, and with luck, may galvanize younger readers into asking questions and Googling names and maybe connecting with a moment in their own history.

“Sometimes having more when you want everything still feels like nothing.”

But I guess the thing that sticks with me most, that has ensured my love of this book, is that I care deeply about both Jake and Aiden. Mimsy Hale was able to draw out their voyage of discovery in a way that heightens the suspense of when they will finally get their acts together, while never raising doubt that they will, and never once doubt that this is as it should be. When they come together physically, it is so emotionally fraught, drenched in passion and intimacy, reverence and care, that I feel like a voyeur, and yet, breath stolen from my body, I cannot look away. My heart clenches with each misstep, each perceived sign of disinterest, as each missed opportunity to communicate passes by only to leave a deepening tension and a greater chance for misunderstanding. I ache with each tear that falls and rejoice with every step they take toward each other. From beginning to end, I was caught up and desperately in love with both boys and their journey into each other’s forevers.

At its heart, as with any road trip story, 100 Days is about finding out what it means to be Home. This is a love story about two young men finding their way home, and realizing that they’ve always been there.

“Stoke the fires. Start the engines.”

I HAVE AN ENTIRE FOREST IN MY EYE