The book I've read this week is all about moving on and how difficult it can be. Frankly I find it the most difficult challenge that life can throw at you. I have several issues in my life that I should have moved on from years ago but haven't for reasons I still can not fathom.
For me moving on with life is like allowing a part of yourself to die. It might be a part of yourself that you love and cherish, something so ingrained in your personality that it defines who you are. But move on we must, as life never stands still. There are parts of my life I've been happy to say goodbye to. Strangely enough they tend to be the parts that occasionally rear their ugly heads when all I want is to see them gone.
But then there are things in my life that I simply can't forget, no matter how hard I try. Memories of good times with people I no longer see. Echoes of moments, words, phrases or even looks that have buried themselves so far down in my heart that to remove them would take removing the organ itself.
Most of my adult life I've been stuck in a limbo, caught between pining for the home of my childhood (where most of the time stupidly I was unhappy) and embracing the area I have lived in since the tender age of twenty, which sounds easy but really isn't.
Just this weekend I went back to my childhood home to spend some time with my family, whilst leaving my husband and children in my current home. I missed my current home when I left it, but missed my old home when I left there. In the end I felt for a while like I didn't fit in either place, like I was stranded in between being one person and another.
How apt then that this week's book raises those issues.
The House With Chicken Legs is a story about thirteen year old Marinka, who lives with her grandmother, Baba Yaga (a fabled character from Russian traditional fairy tales). They live in a house with chicken legs which moves from place to place. Every night it is Baba's job to help the souls of the dead depart from this plane of existence. She does this by preparing a meal for them and allowing them one last night to indulge themselves and revel in the memories of their lives. She then escorts them to a gate which they must pass through before making the journey to the afterlife.
Unable to speak to living people and constantly on the move Marinka does not want to continue in the family buisiness as she feels like it's not for her. In fact she wants nothing more than to have a normal life as a normal person. But eventually certain revelations lead her to realise that she doesn't fit with normal life any more than the life of a 'guardian of the gate'. It is that lack of stability that leads her down a very destructive path.
A very steadily paced book, I found it unputdownable. I felt something for the character's plight straight away, feeling her struggle as she grappled with her changing situation. I read two thirds of it on my coach journey home today.
It doesn't just pull on the heart strings, it plays a full string quartet piece with them.
The writing style contains some beuatifully vivid imagery and flows smoothly with no jarring passages or overly boring waffle. I can see clearly why it is a bestseller.
Maybe I should learn from it, take one last night and say one last goodbye before purging myself of the past. Maybe those issues I struggle to let go of were still there because up till now, it wasn't time to let go of them. Maybe it is now. We'll never really know I don't think.
Book 24 of my 52 book list and my bestseller.
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