A review by ioanaisreading
Roots and Sky by Christie Purifoy

3.0

This book is very poetic. If you are not at all familiar with Christie this might be surprising. She reminded me a bit of Ann Voskamp and her ability to turn the mundane into poetry. This is what Christie does: she takes the normal, ordinary, every day things and looks at them through a deeper and more profound lens. You need to pay attention to her words, not approach the book feeling tired and just wanting to get this book over with. There is a lot of good stuff in here and she offers quite a few thoughts to ponder.

I liked how she structured the book in four parts, each for one of the four seasons. The first one is autumn because that was the season when she and her family moved into Maplehurst, the house her husband and her had dreamed about for a long time. Autumn is also the time of year when her youngest daughter, Elsa was born. I liked her take on each season and how she relates to them and how these look like in a new city and a new house. I tried as much as possible to read a season in one sitting, or at least to not let too much time to pass before I moved to another one because I wanted to see what she saw in each one. The book reads like a collection of journal entries. A few times she talks in the present tense and I had some moments where it seemed that some ideas made sense to her, but were a bit more tricky for me as a reader to get them and be able to be keep up with them. As I said, the language is quite poetic, you need not rush in reading it. I enjoyed reading her take on some things, although I don't necessarily agree with her completely. I kept imagining what she was describing and I so wish I were able to visit Maplehurst myself!

I received this book a long, long time ago from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts expressed here are my own.