Product Description

Annoyed at yet again being taken for granted, fifty-year-old Linda refuses to accompany her successful, executive husband on a Rotary trip. The more Jim tries to manipulate the situation, using friends and their adult children to persuade her to go, the more she digs in her heels. Instead, she sets off on her own to walk from East to West coast. The ups and downs and climatic changes of the walk, across wild open moors, fertile dales and the mountainous Lake District, provide time and space in which to reflect on her life and consider her future. Her outlook is totally changed when she meets Nick, another lone walker. But the walk, like life, is not a clearly defined path. Full of challenges and decisions, it is sometimes an easy stroll, at others a hard climb for little reward; sometimes it offers dangerous diversions, or is shrouded in the mist of past experience. As the walk progresses Linda discovers that life offers more than one route to happiness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #463562 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 309 pages

Review
"As comfortable as a pair of well-worn walking boots." Joan Smith the Literary Consultancy"

From the Author
There is a saying to the effect that life is a journey and that the journey is more important than the destination. The idea for COAST TO COAST came to me on a walk. I had walked to the top of a mountain and although I could see for miles, my starting point had become obscured by the ups and downs of the ground I'd covered; my finishing point was concealed by the challenges yet to be faced. I knew where I was heading but the route I had planned had already undergone changes to overcome obstacles. Just like my life, really. So, I plotted my story to fit the landscape. It's about a woman in her middle years, with all the joys and regrets of half her life lived and a future ahead, but for whom recent events have caused doubts about her chosen route. To a greater or lesser degree, I think most women have been there.

About the Author
Janet Minshull grew up in a Kentish seaside town with her six sisters and brother playing 'imagine' games and writing prize winning compositions in school. After the failure of her early marriage, she married her graphic designer boss and has lived happily ever after, working together in the advertising business in Canterbury, walking wherever and whenever they could. Janet manages an idyllically located hotel on the shores of Ullswater - a perfect job for a writer, providing interesting characters and four winter months of writing time.

Customer Reviews

Empty nest-lit?
If you're female and in your mid-forties to mid-fifties, and you enjoy a well-written, good read, you may feel a little frustrated in modern book stores. Okay, there is plenty of literary fiction out there, but what happens when you've worked through the Richard and Judy list and you fancy something lighter, maybe for a holiday read? You've outgrown Bridget Jones, and you'd rather leave the clogs-and-shawl, raped at 14, "we 'ad it tough in them days" books for your mother.

Welcome to Transita land. Despite having a name more reminiscent of a post British-Rail train company, this innovative publisher is aiming specifically at the more mature, but still adventurous, woman reader. Women wrestling with the problems of changing roles, second careers, impending retirement (theirs or partners), the pleasures and pains of elder-care or dating in early middle age.

This example covers the territory well, with its likeable heroine expected to fit in with her husband's Rotary holiday plans without a second thought, at least on his part. Instead, she resists all manipulation from husband, daughters and friends to rekindle a sense of adventure mislaid some time ago by tackling a solo long-distance trek. What happens on the way appears predictable from a glance at the back cover, but Jan Minshull draws us in with convincing characterisation, a real feel for landscape, and a twist which will appeal particularly to dog owning readers.

I particularly admired her ability to tell backstory (most of us have quite a bit by this age), without taking plot too far off the boil. And well done for having a fifty year old who thinks nothing of a daily five mile walk - and not just to lose weight.

Give it a try, you'll be glad you did. Then Google Transita for more of the same or, better still, visit an independent bookshop on your next trip.

Not really for me!
As with all the Transita novels this follows the same excellent formula of `giving a heroine over 45 a voice' The novels setting did not appeal to me very much, in all honesty I do not think I would have chosen to read this, had it not been for the challenge to myself to read all the Transita catalogue! I enjoy walking and to some extent dogs, but there was just a little too much of both for me, plus the rather slow start did not help.
Fortunately it gathered pace and is well written, so I would still recommend to others.
Linda the heroine evaluates her life while walking the Coast to Coast Footpath from Robin Hoods Bay on the east coast of England, to St Bee's on the west coast. I liked the character of Linda and tended to feel sorry for her, especially when she discovered that her chance meeting walking companion was not quite what he seemed!
So to sum up a reasonable plot with likeable characters that just did not excite me.

Walking a problem through
A surprising read. Jan Minshull's first novel is insightful and well crafted. Through the eyes of her gentle, thoughtful heroine, Linda, she examines the problems in their marriage in depth and detail. Around this core, we accompany Linda on the Coast to Coast walk - meeting people, getting to know her family, thinking, experiencing the highs and lows of the challenge she is facing, and eventually sharing with her the biggest decisions of her life. Like Linda, most women enter their fifties with a need to undertake some checks and balances, reviewing what's gone before and what the future may hold. Coast to Coast looks at one woman's experience but it's optimism may infect many.