Often a book - or any work of art - can elicit a ''love it'' or ''hate it'' response in different people.
Unusually, Canadian-born, England-domiciled Emma Hooper's debut novel managed to provoke something close to both in me.
To be fair, I really enjoyed this story.
It is heart-warming and heart-wrenching, is beautifully told, has likeable well-drawn characters, and a wonderfully conveyed sense of time and place, a tiny rural Canadian community through the years.
Etta is 82, starting to lose her memory, but determined to see the sea.
So one day she leaves a note for husband Otto and starts walking - from their farm in landlocked Saskatchewan heading southeast to Halifax, Nova Scotia, some 2000 miles.
But - and it's a big one - it appears to me to be a mirror image of English author Rachel Joyce's recent novel duet The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy.
Pilgrimage tales are nothing new of course and are widely used.
They offer much in terms of a narrative structure (confronting highs and lows on the road ahead while analysing issues left behind, and the chance for a resolution of past trauma provided by the physical resolution of reaching a destination).
Hooper's pilgrimage lacked the depth of Joyce's however, and the similarities nagged at me continually.
Even the differences (traversing Canada rather than England, the love triangle of two males and one female not the other way around, a female pilgrim not a male one, letters written by the waiting husband, not the walking one, and a coyote - the James of the title - replacing Harold Fry's tag-along dog) only seemed to highlight the resemblances, or be a cynical attempt to distance the book from Joyce's.
It is difficult to believe the book purely coincidental given the physical proximity of the authors (neighbouring counties) and the widespread popularity of 2012 Booker contender Harold Fry.
However, in fairness to both author and publisher, if it is a genuine matter of coincidence, it is worth noting the points in the book's favour, for there is much that stands up to scrutiny.
I loved Hooper's Saskatchewan setting and her deft characterisation.
The history of the characters that is slowly revealed is both quirky and meaningful: from Otto's childhood on the farm growing up as one of 15 children (who are numbered for easy identification); their occasional schooling with Etta as their teacher; the Depression years and the shadow and the reality of World War 2 (both for the men who left and the women who were left behind); Etta's legacy of loss and grief; and the love triangle with quiet and undemanding Russell, who was to all intents and purposes ''adopted'' as a youngster by Otto's large and accommodating family.
The unfolding story is engaging, the themes universal (memory, reality, love, loss and sacrifice) but within them Hooper has crafted a personal and beautiful story.
It has to be acknowledged this book will probably find favour with fans of Joyce's works simply because of the similarities, whereas those who haven't read her duo will be unaffected by any comparisons and likely to enjoy it in its own right. As with any work, readers will be the ultimate judges.
• Helen Speirs is ODT books editor.
