A Short Walk Through a Wide World

"It comforts her that for every path she’s taken during her many revolutions around the world—for every individual footstep, it seems—there’s a story."

Kind of a melancholic book overall, but also one that made me think about the value of living in the moment, about all the stories one makes in a lifetime, and how you can affect someone from just a brief meeting and never even know it. I finished this book yesterday but still find myself thinking about it at work, so I guess that’s the mark of something I really got a lot out of.

Aubry harbors a disease. Not a contagious disease, but one that, if left untended too long, will kill her. The treatment isn’t a conventional one—as long as she keeps traveling, the disease stays dormant. But stay in any one place for more than a couple days, and it rears its ugly, bloody, awful head and Aubry must move on or die. She can’t retrace her steps, can never return to cities she’s already been, and thus can’t form prolonged attachments to people or places without being forced to give them up to keep her disease happy. This is a story of her journey, the places she travels, the people she meets, and how this endless cycle that dominates her life affects her.

First and foremost, not a lot happens. I know that’s a weird thing to say given the premise, but the story is about Aubry’s journey and not about the disease per se. Lots of short stories in Aubry’s life, but don’t go into this expecting neat answers. It’s very much in the realm of magical realism, from some of the situations Aubry ends up in and some of the people she meets, but the book still maintains one foot in reality and always brings her back. I really enjoyed the journey and was able to overlook that some of my main questions were never explicitly answered in the process, but it might not hit the right notes for someone looking for a definitive resolution.

I really did love the way this author wrote Aubry. We follow her on her journey from the first days of her disease, to when she starts running from her disease, to when she starts hunting her disease, and finally to when she starts accepting her disease. All along the way I felt simultaneously bad for Aubry who has to give up all these people and places she loves every few days and also really admiring the mental fortitude it took her to do it. The longer she’s with this disease the more it starts wearing on her, and I appreciated that the author was able to convey that so well.

Just a beautiful, melancholy story about a woman and her time in the world. I really loved it, honestly.