Oh what a lovely book! My Libby app included it in the Fiction (Humor) category, which is only true for the first part. This is not a book to read to escape or to laugh; no beach read. But it is a book about friendship, about lasting relationships, and about how to grow. I loved it all and hope that her other books that I will seek out now will be just as rewarding! ( )

Quotes, notes and snippets:
Part 1: Duck Woods: ....the UPS truck stops by her house more than any other. By which I mean its a short step from ordering everything online to wanting to butcher an old tree for no good reason.
Part 1: Road Trip: ...My father always drove and I sat behind him. My mother remained in the passenger's seat as always. The diagonals are what is important here.....and that is how we grew up, with me watching my mother and my brother watching my father.
Part 1: Driving Lessons: In that I mean there are ironies everywhere the world does not allow you to talk about even half as much as you would like.
Part 2: Rewards: I was being given an enormous gift of time. I wanted to use it well. I was not interested in finding out who I was alone. I knew that person and I was sick of her. I was interested in finding out who i was with people and why that person was hard to be.
Part 3: Posts and Tweets: #fortnightfriend But I've never used a hashtag in my life....that doesn't matter....but I feel weird.
( )

I had to read this book slowly, so that I could savor each page. I didn't comprehend until near the end that May had suffered such a trauma due to her mother's death that she was literally emotionally frozen. She has observed friendship and love, but doesn't know how to achieve it. As her father ages, she feels that her life is going to be totally empty soon if she doesn't develop relationships with other people. Visiting old friends is a way to get in touch with her younger self and learn what childhood friends had liked about that person. Along the way she meets new people and becomes better acquainted with others who befriend her in spite of her "prickliness."
I personally like prickly people, having had many in my life and possibly being one myself. Added to my enjoyment on that level were the observations about trees and plants throughout the book. As a botanist, May discusses various kinds of trees, how they stand alone, but are connected invisibly (underground) through their roots. This is how she sees friendship among people and what she wants to build for herself.
Notes: “Midway through my fortieth year, I reached a point where the balance of the past and all it contained seemed to outweigh the future, my mind so full of things said and not said, done and undone, I no longer understood how to move forward. I was tipped backward and wobbly, my balance was off, and this made sense to me. A life seemed so long, I couldn't see how anyone proceeded under the accumulated weight of it.”
"Better to take the train, where I can watch the trees rush by, though so many were in bad shape from pruning and storms, they started to make me sad. Do trees regret their lot? The ones struggling in cities or growing along forgotten margins? Do they dream of dark nights and quiet forests?"
"You grow up thinking it's natural for the ones who love most to keep their distance. Love stands apart; love lets you come to it. This isn't wrong, exactly, but I wanted to learn how to stand closer."
"Welcoming a friend into your life is like folding egg whites: it should be done gently and with good technique, leaving lots of air."
"Perhaps a best friend is someone who ....holds the story of your life in mind. Sometimes in music a melodic line is so beautiful the notes feel inevitable; you can anticipate the next note through a long rest. Maybe that is friendship. A best friend holds your story in mind so notes don't have to be repeated."
"Why do I like gardening? Because I worry I've inherited a certain hopelessness, a potentially fatal lack of interest, that I'm diseased with reserve. Making a garden runs counter to all that. You can't garden without thinking about the future." ( )

What I liked: the plants, the thoughts on friendship, the narrator's growth as a person, the awkwardly realistic interactions, the plants. What didn't quite work for me was how light this novel feels overall. The lessons all feel like they come too easily, and there was this weird thing in the second half where multiple times it felt like the author was ending the story, then it kept going, like stop-and-go traffic within sight of the destination. ( )

Really wanted to like this more than I did. Had such high hopes, but it dragged, and I didn't care what the main character was trying to tell me. ( )