A Lifetime of Impossible Days – Tabitha Bird

I laughed, I cried, I felt every emotion reading this amazing story.  It is whimsical, it is fantastical (is that a word) but at the heart it is a story of trauma and grief and how dealing with the past can have drastic effects on our future.

Tabitha Bird has truly written a masterpiece.  It’s strange, it’s unusual, and it’s hard to put into words how to even describe it but is a truly stunning book.  You really need to let yourself go when reading this, think Alice in Wonderland disappearing down a rabbit hole.  Don’t expect things to make sense.

We meet Willa in 1965 at age 8, in 1990 at age 33 and in 2050 at age 93 when on one impossible day, 93 year old Willa mails two parcels with a note “One ocean; plant in the backyard” setting off a magical time slip that allows Willa to visit her future and past selves. 

Willa at all 3 stages of her life is so full of depth and emotion.  I adored Willa at 93, she was my absolute favourite.  Her sense of humour had me laughing out loud, her strength had me full of admiration for her and her confusion and her fear had me in tears.  I hope at that age I am running around in brightly coloured gumboots or moonboots and possibly ordering a cow for the backyard off a talk-back radio show.

Willa at 8 is the most heartbreaking.  No child should have to know such trauma in their young life.  Feeling responsible for her younger sister, trying to help her mother who has become unable to be there for her daughters both physically and emotionally, all the while living with the terror of a violent father. The abuse was handled with care and was mostly inferred which I also appreciated.  As a reader I could take it as far as I was comfortable with and it was just as impactful without making the whole book disturbing.

33 year old Willa is possibly the most important of all.  The adult who is now a mother herself, who has never dealt with the pain of her past but needs to in order to be able to have a future for herself and her own family.  “I’m not sad or happy…….I’m nothing.  I’ve forgotten how to feel.  I’ve stuffed everything that happened in the past so far inside me.  I’ve stuffed myself inside, too, and now I’m not even me.”

This was one of the very few books I’ve read that after I finished the last page and closed the cover, I put the book down and just sat there.  I really had to process it all.  I still can’t believe it’s a debut. 

To quote 8 year old Willa “amaze-a-loo” I really wish everyone could read this one.  Thank you so much to the author for sending me a copy of her book in exchange for this review.

*****