Off Course: A Novel

by Michelle Huneven

A bear climbs onto a cabin's deck, presses his nose to the sliding door. Inside, a young woman stands to face him. She comes closer, and closer yet, until only the glass stands between them . . .

The year is 1981, Reagan is in the White House, and the country is stalled in a recession. Cressida Hartley, a gifted Ph.D. student in economics, moves into her parents' shabby A-frame cabin in the Sierras to write her dissertation. In her most intimate and emotionally compelling novel to date, Michelle Huneven--author of Blame , which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award--returns with her signature mix of fine-grained storytelling, unforgettable characters, and moral complexity.

Cress, increasingly resistant to her topic (art in the marketplace), allows herself to be drawn into the social life of the small mountain community. The exuberant local lodge owner, Jakey Yates, with his big personality and great animal magnetism, is the first to blur Cress' focus. The builder Rick Garsh gives her a job driving up and down the mountain for supplies. And then there are the two Morrow brothers, skilled carpenters, who are witty, intriguing, and married.

As Cress tells her best friend back home in Pasadena, being a single woman on the mountain amounts to a form of public service. Falling prey to her own perilous reasoning, she soon finds herself in dark new territory, subject to forces beyond her control from both within and without.

Unsentimental, immersive, and beautifully written--"Huneven's prose is flawless," according to The New Yorker-- Off Course evokes the rapture of new love, the addictive draw of an intense, impossible connection, and what happens when two people simply can't let go of each other or of their previous commitments. As her characters struggle with and delight in one another, Huneven subtly exposes the personal and social forces at issues of class, money, and family, as well as the intricate emotional and economic transactions between parents and children, between husbands and wives, between lovers, and between friends.
Michelle Huneven is one of our most searching, elegant novelists--Richard Russo has called her "a writer of extraordinary and thrilling talent." In Off Course , she introduces us to an intelligent young woman who discovers that love is the great distraction, and impossible love the greatest distraction of all.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Book Club, Romance, Adult, Drama

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2014

About the author

I am the author of four novels.

I was born in Altadena, California just a mile from where I live now. I college-hopped (Scripps, Grinnell, EWU) and landed at the Iowa Writer¹s Workshop where I received my MFA.

My first two books, Round Rock (Knopf 1997) and Jamesland (Knopf 2003), were both New York Times notable books and also finalists for the LA Times Book Award. My third novel, Blame, (Sarah Crichton Books, FSG, 2009), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and also a finalist for the LA Times Book Award. My fourth novel, Off Course, (Sarah Crichton Books, FSG, 2014), is coming out April 1, 2014.
Along the way, I’ve received a GE Younger Writers Award and a Whiting Award for Fiction. For many years my “day job” was reviewing restaurants and writing about food for the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly and other publications. I’ve received a James Beard award (for “feature writing with recipes”) and an assortment of other awards for food journalism.

I’m presently teaching creative writing to undergraduates at UCLA and writing the occasional bit about food. I live with my husband Jim Potter, dog (Piper), cat (Mr. Pancks), and talkative African Grey parrot (Helen) in Altadena.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything about this novel sounded good to me from the get go:
…..the title “Off Course”….(who can’t recall a time in one’s life when clearly going ‘off course’ left a major impact?)…
.…..the photo of that ‘bear/woman/and bed’ is eye catching and seems to be saying a thousand words…(so intriguing)…
……I like stories about women going off into the woods to retreat ( for any reason)…
Plus…
……I like stories that contemplate moral issues.
This novel has all of the above - with juicy drama tossed in.

I also wanted to read a book by Michelle Huneven…(my first),
Her new book “Search” ….[out later this month] ….has me interested too.

Cressida (Cress) Hartley - [single, late twenties] - needed to finish up her PhD economics dissertation. She wasn’t enthusiastic about her field of study any longer — yet she still planned to finish her commitment.
She was desperately needing time away.
Her parents A-Frame cabin in the California Sierra woods was the perfect solution — hoping a personal retreat would give her the quiet environmental inspiration she needed to concentrate on that dissertation.

As the title more than ‘hints’ — Cress goes ‘off course’.
Next to no work was getting done on that dissertation….instead Cress takes a job waitressing and it wasn’t long until she was having a fling with Jakey, the owner of the local lodge.
The drama was just beginning—
Then Cress had a more dangerous affair with Quinn Morrow (an older married man).

As tension grows, community gossip continues, and obsession builds — we wonder how Cress will survive the messy life that’s now completely overtaken her — (forget that dissertation)….she has bigger apples to fry….

The setting is gorgeous— the writing -lovely - (nails on a chalkboard subtly-suspenseful prose at times) - real life - real characters— with real problems. I found it cringe-painful to watch Cress make so many bad choices — [being 69 and 11 months old is looking better all the time]….
My quiet unexciting life is looking pretty good right about now.

As for that bear on the cover —- ha — this novel is like a bear TRAP! (and I kid you not - a bear does visit our protagonist)…

The ending left me unsettled —- but I was completely addicted to the tangly shambles, the descriptions, the atmosphere, the dialogue, …..and Cress’s masochist (at times), inner voice of denial .

I was hooked……
Michelle Huneven’s writing is seriously super….
I look forward to reading more of her books.

[Edan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so beautiful. Although I loved the prose and the setting from the beginning, its episodic style was hard to get into. I had a difficulty remembering who characters were, and sometimes the summarized nature made it hard to really feel invested in the heroine's, Cressida's, conflicts. But, but! I am so glad I stuck with this. This novel accrues meaning and beauty and heft as it goes on, and it's devastating. I was so moved by the ending, my throat heavy, my eyes tearing up...Huneven depicts with such elegance the thrills and pain of love and longing. It's an incredible book about adultery, from the point of view of the "other woman"...

Also, it made me want to go hiking. HIKING. If you know me, then you know that's a literary miracle!

I love Michelle Huneven's work.

[Jon Boorstin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up is a dirty business. It’s messy and uncertain, treacherous and humiliating. We greedily grab at the wrong things, or the wrong people. Along the way we become someone we don’t like, or even recognize. But if we’re persistent, and resiliant, and open to surprises, we may cobble together a version of ourselves that feels like our own. Michelle Huneven’s fine new novel captures the pain, the mystery, and the confusion of becoming yourself.

It’s honest about the cost. But it also reveals the excitement of not knowing, and the glorious highs that punctuate the trip. Huneven’s clear vision of her people, her patience with them, her tolerance for character surprises, and the precise and vivid moments when she draws out their charms and their quirks, make Off Course a remarkable book. We discover ourselves in the search.

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel started off promising, but the writing is uneven and there are too many characters and not enough meat. I decided to abandon it when I caught myself sighing before picking up the book.

The story is set in 1981*, and Cress (short for Cressida) needs to finish her economics dissertation. She works out a deal with her parents in which she'll stay in their cabin in the woods for a few months, giving her a chance to write, but she can also keep an eye on a construction crew her father hired.

Soon, like, the first day, Cress starts sleeping with a divorced man who owns a nearby lodge, which turns out to be a very bad decision. She doesn't work on her dissertation and she wastes time on local affairs. This is where I got frustrated with the book, because tons of new characters in the town kept showing up in her life, and the story flits around, not settling on anything. Cress also started obsessing over the married guy when he stopped paying attention to her, and her immaturity and stupidity made me wonder if I had accidentally fallen into one of those New Adult-type books, in which I have to slog through 300 pages before Cress can get her shit together. I flipped ahead to the end to see if the story seemed to improve, but it did not look promising.

I had wanted to like this because a friend recommended it, but it didn't work out. Maybe you will like it more.

*Note: Several novels I've read that were set in the recent past, e.g. the 1980s, spent too much time referencing pop culture or news from that period. In the section of Off Course I read, I was relieved that the author didn't overdo the 1980s references, other than a mention of Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostage crisis. There was also a comment about having to make long-distance phone calls either early in the morning or late at night, because those were the off-peak hours. (Telephone companies would charge more for calls made during business hours, such as 8am to 6pm.) I did laugh at that because that totally used to be the norm, and when I was a kid it was socially acceptable to make those frugal calls in the evening, after the rates changed. The rise of cell phones and smart phones must have changed the business model. Anyway, that telephone reference prompted a fun discussion about the ways we used to try to skirt the phone company charges. Good times.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book may inspire a new shelf, a substratum of 'the love story', which is 'the mistress's story.' A young, but not too young, woman looking for something for more in her life, more fun, more juice, something to really matter, than her economics dissertation, which seems, the longer she waits to complete it, less and less necessary. She moves up to the Sierra, into her parents' cabin--where, ironically, her parents had taken her and her sister as teenagers to remove them from the temptation of boys--and begins a casual affair with a playful, too-old-for-you lodge owner, and then a much more serious affair with a married carpenter.

The affair, in the hands of Michelle Huneven (Jamesland, Blame), proves an intoxicant as addictive as any substance, and actually reads a bit like a drug story, though there is hardly the fight to put it down that there would be in any self-respecting junkie tale. Because obsessive love isn't illegal, or expensive, at least in monetary terms (interesting that the character is an economist!). The costs are to be paid elsewhere.

The photograph on the cover, of a woman sitting next to a bear (the St. Petersburg photographer Gregori Maoifis is an amazing artist--that is a real bear, and the model was terrified! Check out his work, he did a great series with the bear, and another based on the Tarot, fantastic.) is the perfect image for this book--for the bear, a friendly bear, is a great metaphor for this kind of all-encompassing sexual connection. You can't argue with a bear, you can't finesse it, you can't game it, it's dangerous, there's no future, it can claw the daylights out of you, and yet, it's your bear. What you bear. What you can bear, what you should bear.

What I especially liked about this book was its portrayal--rather than description--of such a love. There is a crispness of Huneven's style which keeps the reality tight in what could otherwise have been a real bodice-ripper, in fact, in all of her books, the author's sense of reality framing the watery world of intense emotion is what keeps the reader on-course even as the protagonist heads for the falls.

The falls in this case being the way the protagonist, Cress Hartley, blissfully floating down the rushing stream of her affair, finds herself estranged from friends and supporters when her affair becomes a public commodity in the small Sierra community in which it's being conducted. It's right that Huneven has made her a big city girl, unaware of the solidarities and moralities--even if hypocritical--of small town life, thinking they won't apply to her somehow.

An excellent, emotionally accurate, adult view of a woman blown very much off-course by an obsessive love.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cressida Hartley is suffering from a serious case of ennui. At 28, she is stagnating in ABD status, trying to finish her dissertation in economics, wholly disliking her field of expertise. It's the eighties, and Reaganomics doesn't suit her. But she found a way to integrate her affinity with art with her thesis--she's writing about the value of art in the marketplace. So she moves to her parents vacation A-frame in the Sierras, intending to wrap herself in the mountain air, solitude, and writing.

Soon enough, Cress seeks out disruptions and distractions, and becomes absorbed in the community. I was installed in the story quickly, as I noted that her quirky supporting cast of characters were humanized and sympathetic rather than straw caricatures. Her parents are demanding and difficult. They are building a new cabin and come down periodically, often on the verge of suing the contractor, Ricky Garsh. Cress's father is peevish and parsimonious to the point of churlish, even to his own children. Cress's sister, Sharon, now living in London, goes through the primal birth therapy, so popular during this era. This alerts the reader that the sisters had some significant issues. Cress is largely unaware of her deep-seated problems, and acts out by entwining in a difficult relationship. Twice. And with much older men.

"She wasn't making specific plans, but that hairline crack, she knew, could widen instantly to accommodate her, and day by day, its thin blackness grew less frightening, more logical and familiar, as if she could now walk right up, touch it with her fingertips, and, with a quick last smile over her shoulder at the fading world, slip right in."

This is not a prosaic domestic drama, not with Huneven at the helm. As in all her novels, she is plugged into collective concerns such as alcohol abuse and complex, obsessive relationships. And always, nature. The landscape, wildlife, and climate buttress the story and provide ample adventure and scenic beauty, as well as some brassy comedy.

This is Huneven's most fully realized novel, with a stable focus and a memorable denouement. I'm still inhabiting Cress's life, long after the last page.

[Melissa Lee-Tammeus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I loved the B&W picture on the front. I would love to have it as a print. It speaks volumes for the story that unfolds. It took me a long time to warm to the main character as I was initially intrigued because the premise of the story line was she went to a remote cabin to work on a dissertation, but that is only one small factor of this story. It turns out to be about a relationship that turns one inside out. Her moral ground is a bit shaky which was cause for the slow to warm but once she was enmeshed in a relationship that she no longer had control over, I could not help but begin to root for her. I keep screaming "Get out! Get out now!" but she didn't listen. Even the ending is a bit heartbreaking. Wrong love gone wrong. Who isn't intrigued by that? We are all suckers for punishment.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Economics Ph.D candidate Cressida Hartley escapes to her family’s cabin nestled in the Sierras for three months in hopes of writing her dissertation, however, she finds herself distracted.

A story of choices, particularly the choices of Cressida Hartley, the focal point of the novel. Cressida is at a turning point in life. Her decisions will leave you shaking your head in frustration. I can’t count the number of times I felt like crawling through the book to shake sense into her. She’s rather complex, opaque, leaving you void of feeling any warmth towards her. Cressida exists all around us, perhaps she’s a friend, you or a friend of a friend, her character is all too plausible. Personally I have encountered a few Cressida’s in my lifetime.

Quinn, her love interest, has his own issues, lending his issues as excuses for his stupidity and choices, the reader feels a twinge of empathy, not much a mere twinge. Nevertheless, he is equally frustrating.

Huneven reminds me of Janet Fitch, these two capable authors possess such way with stringing words together forming a necklace of beauty. The writing is stunning along with the emotional depth seeping from the pages. The narrative is intricate in its quiet beauty. A story of depth regarding choices and interactions, highly recommend.

“She wasn’t making specific plans, but that hairline crack, she knew, could widen instantly to accommodate her, and day by day, its thin blackness grew less frightening, more logical and familiar, as if she could now walk right up, touch it with her fingertips, and, with a quick last smile over her shoulder at the fading world, slip right in.”

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can more than relate to this book and that's why I liked it so much. I myself went "of course" in my early twenties..lived in a remote mountain town, spent time with all the wrong men and generally lost (and then found) myself. Its quite honestly the same story except mine didn't take place in the eighties (side note - still haven't figured out how that was relevant to the story) and I got a hold of myself far sooner than our protaganist. She's intelligent and lazy, careless and entitled, emotional and removed. I think you are sort of left to wonder - is she a product of her environment (controlling parents, sheltered upbringing) or is she in fact mentally ill? Regardless she is a complex character and even after I finished the book I can't decide whether I like her or not.

[Nette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stayed up late into the night to finish this book. (And then I stayed up later to go online and order a copy for a friend's birthday.) It isn't a thriller or a mystery or anything with a twist ending: it's just so damn well written and relatable that I had to find out what happened. Maybe it's because it takes place in 1981 -- when all my friends were experiencing similar romantic trials -- or maybe it was the incredibly vivid portrayal of a funky cabin community.

I wish I could add an extra half point because the author lives in Altadena -- next to my own home town, one of the least cool, hipstery places in Southern California for a literary author to live.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave it 50 pages and then decided not to continue. I understand Huneven is quite good, but today I wanted more linguistic play or stylism, maybe something more challenging, and I felt stubbornly resistant to reading a story of obsessive relationships. On page eleven of D'Erasmo Art of Intimacy which I picked up just after I set this novel down, a possible reason:

I have noticed that the intimacy we feel as readers is often generated far less by characters turning to one another [me: or to the reader] and saying intimate things or doing intimate things than it is by a kind of textual atmosphere, or maybe one should say a biosphere, a gallery, a zone that both emanates from the characters and acts upon them very deeply and personally. In other words, the textual where of their meetings, the meeting ground, the figurative topos -- and by this I don't mean physical locations where characters meet, but locutions, places in language that they share -- actually produces not only opportunities for intimacy, but also the actual sense of intimacy.

(The point being that the textual atmosphere of the novel, for me, in the first 50 pages, was lacking in intimacy.)

[Robert Blumenthal · Rating 5 out of 5]

It appears that Michelle Huneven is friends with Mona Simpson. They mentioned each other in their latest novels in the Acknowledgements section. This book could have been written by Mona Simpson, with its vivid characterization and how the reader comes to really care about the protagonist, despite her deep and frustrating flaws. I am sure some people will find this book and chore, getting exasperated with the lead character as she makes one bad decision after another. But for me, the stark Raymond Carver-esque writing interspersed with sharp and brilliant imagery and metaphors, was a true delight. Cress is a woman in her late 20s who goes to her parents' cabin in the Sierras north of LA to finish her dissertation about art and economics. She eventually meets an older married man, with whom she has a torrid and obsessive affair. The book started a bit slow for me, finding it hard to find a foothold into it. However, once it got going, it was like a thriller, with a troubled romance replacing a murder. Will they or won't they? Will he leave his wife and kids for her? Will she give him up and move on? And the last lines. So simple and so telling.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really sure why this novel was not as good as I thought it would be. I liked her prior novel called Blame. But in this one, I just couldn't seem to get inside either of the main characters, Cress or Quinn. I just couldn't like either of them or feel sorry for them. And if her motivations really came from working out issues with her family, why didn't the story really tell us more about her family? Both parents seemed like two dimensional cardboard characters. The nature description of the mountain environment was pretty well done, however. And the obsessional quality of Cress's attachment to Quinn was made clear.

[rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story arc of Off Course is one that I found painfully familiar, and I suspect many other women will find familiar as well: a woman (Cress) on the verge of achieving some degree of personal success in her late twenties experiences some apathy, allows herself to be superficially distracted by a man (Jakey) who is openly using her. Then while licking her wounds, falls into a pit of years of lost time consumed by obsession with another man (Quinn) who throws her scraps of love to keep her invested while remaining committed elsewhere (his wife).

It isn't even easy to read this story, let alone live one like it. Couched in the cozy language of forested California cabins and community meatloaf dinners, there is still the sharp ugliness of vulnerability being exploited.

Come the end of the relationship, where Cress and Quinn don't end up together, but Quinn's wife does eventually leave him and he doesn't bother to seek Cress out to rekindle a relationship and instead marries someone new, Cress wonders if Quinn was just using her all along. That it wasn't as real for him as it was for her.

Because I can't help but relate to books at a personal level, I will share what I learned from my own experience with this sort of relationship: it doesn't matter if your one-time love was knowingly manipulating you all along, or if they were a flawed human who intended to act consciously then wound up treating you badly, because, life. Who cares. The same result -- no use sugar-coating it -- is that you need to get yourself together, grow up, and move on.

To those who haven't lived like Cress, this book will likely be somewhat annoying, as you wonder why she as a smart woman can't just get over these men. To those who have lived like Cress, this book feels sort of like a friend who has seen you through your less flattering times and still believes in you. There is a matter of factness about the story, an acknowledgement that this is a thing that sometimes women go through -- even smart women at the top of their professional field. Eventually, we come out on the other side, even if it takes a long way to get there.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm so disappointed with this one! I'd been looking forward to its arrival in the library since ordering it this spring, and it has such a nice cover, and I just really wanted to love it...but I couldn't stand the main character, Cress, or anyone else for that matter. They all seem so self-absorbed and miserable, and I didn't care about any of the mountain men or their leather outfits or fire building skills. I don't understand why it was set in the early eighties and I'm not entirely sure I know where these mountains are in California, and I just couldn't ever get a handle on the location or people or anything to make me think any of it mattered. Not impressed.

Maybe Michelle Huneven wanted to make me go through all of this? I couldn't seem to walk away from the book the way Cress couldn't walk away from the destructive relationships in her life? If that was Huneven's ploy she succeeded but it doesn't make me like her for it.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the way Michelle Huneven expresses herself, but I didn’t love the plot or characters of this book. Her first three novels had overarching themes that were quite similar to one another – all very good, but I was looking forward to reading this novel, which sounded from the synopsis like it would be very different. It was, but for me not in a good way.

The main character, Cress, was so unfocused (which I realize was the point of the book) that I quickly lost interest in her. Her pattern of terrible decisions (or more accurately, failure to make any decisions) dragged on and on. The book had too many peripheral characters that did not add to the story, while others, such as her parents and sister, should have been fleshed out more. It held my interest, but I didn’t find much character growth or resolution, even where I think I was supposed to.

[Carolynmora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it, I love everything by this author. If you are annoyed by people making a lot of bad decisions, this might not be for you. I'd consider it part of one of my favorite genres - "loser lit". Great cast of characters.

[Jeff Vasishta · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Blame” was one of my favorite novels of the last few years and so I happily purchased Michelle Huneven’s newest, “Off Course” without paying too much attention to the reviews. Huneven is not a writer of tight plots, cliff hangers and unexpected twists. Rather, her writing is like a journey down a quietly meandering stream which starts turning into something much bigger and more powerful almost without you realizing it. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, she’s an expert at creating a mood, usually melancholy with her work.
As with “Blame”’s Patsy, this novel’s central character, Cressida Hartley is on a journey of self discovery after a bout of near disastrous behavior. Unlike Patsy, she not an alcoholic (though she drinks heavily at times) but is rather a PHD student, who moves to her parents A-Frame lodge in the Sierra Nevada mountains to finish dissertation. But it’s in the woods where she not only encounters a stinking trash looting bear of the animal kind but a couple of the human kind too, the latter of which, in a pre-curser to “Fatal Attraction” (the film is also mentioned in this novel, which is set mostly in the early ’80’s) turns dark and obsessive.
Cress’s first fling is with the middle aged lodge owner and womanizer. Jakey. Even his name has a comedic, good old boy twang to it. After a while he abruptly drops Cress and moves on, though they retain a loose friendship. It’s the second affair with the brooding, deep voiced, bearded carpenter, Quinn that is Cress’s undoing. Very married to a pretty and loyal wife and with a retinue of kids, Quinn comes across as a pathetic loser, openly cavorting around with his mistress while his wife takes care of the kids off the mountain. However, it’s Cress’ complete capitulation and belief that one day they will marry, revealing their relationship to people in the community, that shows us that something is seriously off kilter with her. “Get some therapy,” advises Julie Garsh, second wife to a local homebuilder. A band of local Christian women organize a prayer group to “Pray her away,” as is she’s been discovered to be a witch. Even her mother gives her money to to fly to London to visit her sister but Cress’ incapable of heeding their advice, such is her state. In Glenn Close’s character is “Fatal Attraction” she recognizes a kindred spirit. The fact that we also like Cress makes her all the more maddening.
A belief in her ability to lure the reader in over time as slow burn rather than with a slew of tantalizing twists and plot pyrotechnics earmarks Huneven’s work. It’s a skill few writers possess and ultimately it leaves the reader with something far more profound and nourishing than the roller coaster, popcorn and cotton candy rides of much pop fiction. There’s also some great prose in here too, describing the mountain scenery and nature, "a coyote, its back haunches eaten by yellow jackets so that the dark pink meat had brain like whorls and crevices,” is one that stands out.
Huneven teaches creative writing writing at UCLA and those in her class are lucky to have her to dispense the many literary jewels she possesses.

[Roberta King · Rating 3 out of 5]

While interesting, this wasn't the most satisfying book.
I wanted to feel more compassion or loathing for the main character Cressida, but she left me ambivalent. The premise is good, she's moved up to her parent's cabin to work on her PhD and instead takes to sleeping around with the locals and then gets tangled up with a married man. They fall in and out of love and wreak havoc on each other. I wish I would have either loved her or hated her for it, but she didn't move me either way.
I felt as if the author spent a lot of time and effort on details that didn't matter to the story--like banquet waitressing and less on why Cressida couldn't write her dissertation, which would have been more interesting.
I loved focal point of the remote cabin as the source of misery in her teen years and the cause of more misery as a adult. The relationship with her sister was also well done and I'd liked to have more of that to to read. Cressida's parents were well-written, too.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Off Course,Michelle Huneven

I don't usually bother to review my five star reads , but made an exception in this case hoping that more people might pick up Off Course.

I'm afraid readers might shy away because of the subject matter...after all , how good can a tale of obsessive love be ? But somehow Huneven makes her maddeningly wrongheaded characters compelling. There are memorable touches to her portrayals of people, and her writing is as elegant and shimmering as always.

I was totally enthrallled to the very end, and can't wait to forget it enough to re-read it.

[Andy Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel started out well. Set in 1981 when an economics student, Cressida, retreats to her parents' cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains to force a finish to her PHD dissertation away from all distractions. There is an interesting tension of love and irritation with her parents, an early feminist perspective on a male academic field and a nice portrait of mountain town living. But the novel loses steam as Cressida falls in love with a married man and the rest of the novel follows this obsession between two ultimately unsympathetic characters

[Paltia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel rather corny saying I wish it had a different ending, but there it is, I do. I found myself being hypercritical of the main character and with further reflection realized some of what I disliked about her, I dislike in myself. She is a completely human human with all the things about herself that makes her and us, real. I loved the bear connection and her habit of sniffing trees. She'd be a great buddy.

[Seawitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

The protagonist isn’t particularly likable, but the writing is very good.

Young woman struggles to find herself, works on her dissertation in a Sierra community, gets entangled in an obsessive love affair…

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, smart, and uncomfortably real. You need this book.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. I know that some readers feel it's merely an "easy read" of a young woman who hasn't yet found herself. She heads to the family cabin in the Sierras and proceeds to fall in lust/love with older men as she avoids completing her dissertation, which is the ostensible reason she's gone into this wilderness. Being familiar with the landscape (although not the eccentrically populated social scene that centers around a lodge owned by Jakey, one of Cress's lovers) I could see and smell and feel the high country pines and firs, the rough hiking, the lakes. Huneven evokes love and its obsessive qulilty beautifully. It's like a bear trap, which is apt because a bear appears intermittently throughout the book.

Here's something I posted on a site of the Iowa Writer's on-line course. The assignment this week involved taking characters into a familiar setting and letting them explore that setting and be in dialogue with each other. "setting" is the major focus but character and dialogue often took over in the 400 word scenes that people shared.

In one thread, there was a discussion of how familiar settings work versus settings that are either completely or partially fictional. Some contributors shared the fact that they want to learn as they write fiction and use this writing as a way to learn about unfamiliar places or ways of life through extensive research. My contribution to this thread has to do with Huneven's book and its setting:

I'm reading Michelle Huneven's novel Off Course and the setting is mountain country...at one point the narrator says it's in Plumas County, California, mountain country I know because we travel to Lassen National Park each summer. I wanted to see the places she described and soon realized that the nearest town "Sparkville" is imagined, as is the "Hapshaw River." And the mountains are pretty likely farther south than Plumas. So I gave up trying to Google these fictitious places. I'm relying on my experience of Lassen, and the little I know about the Sierras. It's clear to me that Huneven is blending real and fictive settings, and I'm actually delighted by that, able to give up the search for images on line and search instead in my imagination and memory as the language she uses work on both. I am not a fiction writer, what little I have written relies on actual places I know...I like the challenge of beginning with the known and letting go...since my real place isn't anyone else's exact experience of that place anyway.

[Elizabeth Wallen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loathed this book. I loathed the main character, really most of the characters. I can't believe it was set in the 80's because the main character had more of the aimless drifting, self entitled narcissism usually attributed to a more recent generation. This book is about a young woman who is supposed to be boarding herself up in her family's vacation cabin somewhere in the mountains in California. She is SUPPOSED to be finishing her doctoral thesis in economics. Instead she fritters her days away roaming in the woods and having affairs with married men in the hills. She is a type of woman I just cannot tolerate. These are the women who sit around waiting and waiting. They waste their lives waiting on some man. She has an off and on affair with a married man for years. Part of the time she seems ambivalent about him and the other times she is desperate about him. He's going to leave his wife for me and we will live happily ever after. I will give up my life and happiness to wait for him. Uhm...no he's not. They never do. And if they do, it won't be long before they cheat on you with someone else. I find these women pathetic and without sympathy. They are as self destructive as alcoholics and drug addicts. What a train wreck of a life. This book did nothing but piss me off.

[HalKid2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me begin by saying the last third of this book is much more engaging than the first two-thirds.

Cressida Hartley heads to her parent's remote vacation cabin to write her dissertation. Looking for any excuse to delay, she gets involved with the locals, including, ultimately, an affair with a married man.

Along the way and through other characters, the author explores the nature of love and passion as it plays out in a small community, full of people with differing values. It also forces you to look at how and when does love become obsession and how much will one person endure to keep it going?

That sounds interesting but I didn't find myself caring that much for the main characters, nor believing the strength of their emotions. Then, by the time I did get engaged (the last third of the book), there was an ending that simply tied everything up too neatly in too few pages. So, to me, the book isn't nearly as believable or interesting as it might have been.

I chose this book because I read an article that suggested that OFF COURSE would be a good contemporary choice for MADAME BOVARY fans. Maybe not surprisingly, MB is MUCH richer.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I think this is one of my new favorite authors! I love how you come to love the characters, get to know them even. I found myself thinking about this story long after I finished. There is so much heartbreak here, but a lot of joy as well. The main character, "Cress", is supposed to be finishing her disertation while staying at her parent's A frame in the Sierras. The community is close knit, out of necessity. Cress is welcomed until she commits the unpardonable sin...she falls in love with a married man. I normally don't read romance type books, but this is much more than that. I loved the shaggy bear that rambled through the community, messing up everyone's patio doors with his sticky nose & paws. Jakey is a memorable character, but he's the male version of a 'loose woman'. I found the end disturbing. It left me feeling there should be more, but to say anymore would give away too much. If you like deep character development and reading the ins and outs of relationships, you will enjoy this book. Just try not to think about it too much!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received Off Course as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

Cressida Hartley escapes to the small resort town in the California mountains where she spent her childhood summers to work on her long-unfinished dissertation. Despite her best intentions, she finds herself pulled into the life of the town and its hardy, colorful array of inhabitants, including one Quinn Morrow, a very intense, very married carpenter.

I identified with Cress. We're at similar stations in our personal and professional lives, though her story takes place 30-something years earlier. She's imperfect, and it's really hard for me to feel a connection to someone who knowingly participates in an affair, but Hunevin does an effective job of making it work. The dialogue is rough and harsh, yet manages to tell a moving story about love, loss, and a second coming of age.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was beautifully written and paced. My assessment of Cress' emotional life evolved throughout, but the journey was a fascinating one. She is not always likeable, but who among is is always likeable? I will say that even in the swaths of this where Cress is selfish and lazy and behaving more like a 17 year old than a 27 year old she is interesting. She constantly put her energy into bad and morally questionable choices and into avoiding maturity and progress and kept falling assbackward into academic success, good jobs and bonded relationships. A compelling if not entirely satisfying read.