The Walk Home is a quiet, steady book that does not try to dress life up. It moves between the present, where Stevie has come back to Glasgow but keeps his distance from his family, and the past, where we see the tangled history that shaped him. There are no big twists. Instead, Rachel Seiffert shows us how families really are, messy, stubborn, sometimes loving, sometimes cruel.
The parts that stayed with me were the small moments. Eric at his desk, working on his drawings, keeping them to himself. Brenda, worn down from years of being the go-between in family disputes. Lindsey, realising the scale of the divides she has married into. These are people who do not have easy role models, who are trying to do better in their own ways, but often fall short. It is not for lack of love, it is that life and history get in the way.
Seiffert does not shy away from the hard stuff. She shows how sectarian grudges can split families for decades, how women often do the emotional work of holding people together, and how some rifts never heal. There is a street scene where Stevie is attacked for being on the wrong side that sums up the pointlessness of it all. It is raw and unvarnished, just like the rest of the book.
“Families do not always fix themselves. Sometimes all you can do is wait and keep the door open.”
I can understand why some readers found the ending difficult. It does not tie things up neatly. But that is what I appreciated most. Families do not always fix themselves. Sometimes all you can do is wait and keep the door open. Reading this in my eighth decade, with plenty of life experience behind me, I felt the truth of it. When I was younger I might have looked for more resolution. Now I know this is how it often is.
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