The Distance Between Me And The Cherry Tree by Paola Peretti

          Losing your sight is one of those things that terrify me - I would genuinely rather lose a limb than my vision.  This book details the emotion behind losing your sight to a relatively rare disease and fleetingly the practicalities of how it feels to be locked in to an encroaching darkness that nibbles away at your sight until it is gone.

Told from the perspective of Mafalda we learn how she works her way through what is happening to her with support from her family and the enigmatic school caretaker Estella who is fighting her own battles.  Mafalda only really has one friend, her grey and brown cat, Ottimo Turcaret, who she found as a kitten in the branches of the school Cherry Tree.  A tree that symbolises her hopes and her losses; indeed she measures her failing sight by how far away she can see the tree.

The only thing that jarred with me was the voice of the 9 and 10 year old Mafalda.  She is a little too naive, a little too innocent, yet she picks up on the nuances of adult conversation filing them away for further consideration.  This aside the book is beautifully translated from the original Italian and it never really feels like a translation (as so many do).  Despite the subject matter of loss it is a hopeful book, the hope that everything will be right in the end, even in the darkness.

I raced through the book in one sitting, which is not hard to accomplish as it is only a little over 250 pages.  Had it been twice the length I think it would still have been a one sitting book, not so much to find out what happens to Mafalda but more to find out how she copes with what has happened to her.  Paola Peretti is writing from experience and it shows how hopeful she is for her own future as well as detailing the agony of being shut out of that so important sense.  I hope she has found her Essential and that we can all find ours.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.