Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt ~ 1966. Follett Publishing, circa 1970s. Hardcover. ISBN: 0-695-49009-5. 192 pages.
Here we have that familiar creature, the vintage bildungsroman. A fine example, to be sure, but a member of a vast common flock.
There are numerous other titles of this ilk still to be found on high school library shelves everywhere; this is not a condemnation, merely an observation.
Somewhere in the United States – midwest? New England? – seven-year-old Julie has just lost her mother to an unspecified illness which they both have shared. Youngest of a sibling group of three – older sister Laura is seventeen, brother Chris the middle child – Julie is sent off to the nearby country home of her mother’s unmarried sister, Aunt Cordelia, a stern and highly regarded teacher at a rural school.
The novel follows Julie along as she navigates her way through the usual childhood and adolescent experiences of someone growing up in the American small-town world of the mid-20th Century. (We never get a firm date as to when this all happens, though clues point to it taking place in the 1940s or 50s. Possibly earlier?)
Young Julie has been an indulged small child with all of the expected attitudes and mannerisms thereof; her aunt strives to mold her young charge into responsible and thoughtful personhood. She succeeds, though it takes ten years. We leave teenage Julie as a younger version of Aunt Cordelia, albeit with a happier love affair in hand than Cordelia experienced in her previous turn.
In the course of this well-presented, gently paced micro-saga (there is a major clue in the title, that “Slowly” is most apt), our heroine comes to terms with her inner flaws and weaknesses, and grows into a likeable young woman of some accomplishment.
Bumps in young Julie’s personal road have included that early traumatic loss of her beloved mother, her older sister’s departure into happy married life with diminished focus on a younger sister, a mildly ne’er-do-well alcoholic uncle living in close proximity to her aunt’s house, an episode of dealing with a mentally challenged and uncared for classmate, and a deeply regrettable boyfriend in high school, who eventually gets one of Julie’s peers pregnant.
Luckily true love is waiting for our heroine, in the person of childhood friend Danny, who sticks around and comes through when most needed. Happy married life beckons, once the two of them finish college, etcetera. One wonders if Julie’s writing ambitions (for of course this book is chockfull of what may well be autobiographical verisimilitude) will be eclipsed by her embrace of her upcoming traditionally housewifely role?
Who knows. Perhaps she’ll have it all…
Well-written in general, with a few far reaches as plot threads are neatly gathered together. An engaging read, but nothing to cross the road for, as it were. Enough complexity for an “adult” read; the “young adult” intended audience likely accounts for the occasional stutters in the plotline as things are tweaked to provide moral teachings.
The biggest drawback to me was that there was absolutely no real sense of time or place; the setting is blandly generic. It’s a moderately engaging character study from first to last, but it doesn’t go deep enough for true memorability.
My rating: 6.5/10
Up a Road Slowly did win the Newbery Medal in 1967, and Irene Hunt was a well-respected writer of teen-targetted novels, her most well-known being the Civil War coming of age story of a young man, Across Five Aprils, 1964, which was a Newbery Honor Book (runner-up) in 1965. Six other YA novels published between 1968 and 1985 are well-regarded but not as well-known as the two Newbery recipients.
Leaves & Pages 
Ah, lovely to see you back. I was concerned you’d been dealing with fires and smoke and evacuation. Have you?
So, this book sounds just so, well, meh for me. And yes, I do get annoyed with a book that is coy about when it takes place, and where. Why all the secrecy?
We personally dodged the fires this year but oh, my! – the SMOKE! We were beset with thick smoke for weeks and weeks, and it was dreadful. Everyone is still coughing, though the skies have luckily cleared. Mostly we’ve just been very busy, and rather unfocussed, with lots of things going on with friends and family, energy and time consuming things for all concerned.
We’re all getting older; people in our personal circle are facing all sorts of challenges. We’ve lost some special people unexpectedly; it’s been quite sad, and we are finding our emotional “bounce” is not as vigorous as it could be this summer. This too shall pass…
Re: the time/place vagueness of this novel – it’s one of the things keeping it from approaching “top rank” in its genre. It’s tremendously hard to paint a mental picture of the scenarios when one can’t figure out which era things are taking place in! Descriptions are not at all detailed. It’s a good book in its way, but not great, in my opinion.
This brought back memories. I read this book when I was 11 or 12 and it somehow affected me deeply, particularly the episode with the neglected classmate, but I never could remember the title or author. I don’t know about reading it again now though; it sounds like it could be a disappointment 50 years later.
I don’t think it would be a disappointment – it is a lovely book and it was a pleasure to read even as an adult with no previous experience with it. I ranked it as I did merely because there are so many books of that genre out there, and some of them are truly stellar in scope, character development, and author’s unique voice, whereas this novel is “only” good. Up a Road Slowly is a keeper for me, and I would be happy to read Irene Hunt’s other novels if and when I bump into them.