Review: ‘The Long Way Round’ Takes Its Time, and Earns It

Not much happens in the first hundred pages of “The Long Way Round,” and that is the point.

The novel follows a single snail across a single garden over one summer. She could cut straight across the lawn. She chooses instead to follow the wall, then the border, then the long curve of the path, stopping often. The book stops with her.

It would be easy to call the novel slow. It is slow. But the slowness has a purpose: by the time the narrator reaches the far gate, the reader knows every stone she has passed, and the ending lands harder for it.

Readers looking for plot should look elsewhere. Readers willing to walk alongside will find one of the gentlest books of the year.