5/20/2023 0 Comments Etta and otto![]() The book's title offers a hint of Hooper's intentionally naive, conjunction-drunk style. That Etta's journey has a psychic or spiritual dimension is implied, in part, by the novel's magic-realist elements, the most magical of which is Etta's travelling companion, a talking coyote named James (the most fantastical is the total absence of biting insects when Etta sleeps, unsheltered, in Northern Ontario's wilderness in high summer). Her reason for doing so and Otto's for not trying to stop her, however, are for him to know and for us to find out.įrom here, we slip continuously between the present, in which Etta walks and Otto waits – he fills his time caring for his newly adopted guinea pig and building a menagerie of life-size papier-mâché animals – and the past, where we get an account of Etta and Otto's first meeting when she was a teacher and he her (slightly younger) pupil at the local school, and their epistolary courtship when Otto joins up to fight in the Second World War. ![]() I will try to remember to come back." Otto, like any loyal spouse, can finish 84-year-old Etta's sentences as well as her thoughts, so he quickly concludes she is headed for the Atlantic coast. ![]() I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. On page one, Otto wakes to find a note from Etta: "I've gone. ![]() Etta and Otto, the first two characters in the title of Emma Hooper's debut novel, are a childless, elderly couple from rural Saskatchewan. ![]()
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