Review (In the place of fallen leaves)

In the place of fallen leaves by Tim Pears is the life story of a girl call Alison. She lives her life in a western country where inhabitants are traditional and religious people.

Through the storyline we learn to understand this little girl that didn’t talk so much at the beginning. Most of the book turns around the description of what she sees, what she hears and what people explain to her or answer to her questions. The mentality of this time makes me think about how a teenager lives nowadays. We are not afraid anymore of older people. I believe adults are, more than anything else, friends that want us to grow up in a world we can understand by ourselves. Years ago, what adults wanted was to have their children helping them with housework. Before, people needed to work to survive, now we can take time for culture. And you should know that culture is the future.

In the childhood of Alison, she is a girl that lives the present. I remember she said something like she doesn’t want to grow up because then she will be unable to swim with boys in the river without a swimsuit. If people would live the present many of us would be happier today. I am sure that the key for happiness is in living the present and leave the past in the past and what is to come let it come. Sartre says: “the present, nothing but the present”.

While she grows up and sees her body change like the one of her older sister Pamela we learn some details of the daily life of her family. The grandmother has inspired me a lot. She lives the life with admiration for it. As technology arrives in their little town new things appeared. For example, the television. For her it is an instrument that shows us that life is something that goes around and comes around. The future is in the past and the past will be in the future.

Life is one, and even if you are afraid of tomorrow you will one day realize that every single problem will resolve itself one day and that’s why we must know that no one in this world can be one hundred percent sad. Life is one and life is beautiful!

Alison leaves her country to study, even though she will lose an important person to her, Jonathan. Her fate was to face up to the outside world that was waiting for her. If one day I lose a valuable person, I would smile with sadness. I will be sad because to lose someone we love is something we are not set up to face. And I will smile to have the chance to meet this wonderful person. In any case, people make us learn something about life or make us learn something about us. People are life because all of us have a different point of view and the build-up of them will be the answer of life!