Instruct: Classify a review as either positive or negative.
Query: Journeys

Guterson uses the beautiful form of the journey -- the bildungsroman, the journey at the beginning of life, the foundation journey, is seen in retrospect-- while Dr. Givens is taking a journey at the end of life. As is seen in his own flashbacks to childhood, war years, marriage and family, Givens is confronted by the unexpected. It is said that late in life one gets a respect for those events in life that one couldn't control and the effects they had on what one could. I am among the few reviewers who respected this book more than Snow Falling on Cedars, but perhaps that is because I worked on a cattle ranch in eastern Oregon where the rancher was dying of cancer, my grandmother had an apple orchard, and my whole professional career has been about family adjustment to illness. Guterson talks movingly about where we live -- in landscapes, inside of larger historical events, and among surprising and varied fellow travellers with biographies as complex as our own.