Lowry, Lois. Tree. Table. Book. New York: Clarion Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2024.
Eleven-year-old Sophia and eighty-eighty-year-old Sophie are best friends. They enjoy drinking tea, listening to music, playing games, and talking about life. But Sophia is becoming increasingly forgetful, and despite Sophie’s attempts to help, eventually it becomes it becomes unsafe for her beloved friend to remain in her own home. Anyone who has known someone with dementia will understand Sophie’s anxiety as she tries to help Sophia pass a cognitive test. Anyone who has read about World War 2 will understand the significance of Sophia’s stories of childhood in Poland. Heart-breaking and heart-warming, this extraordinarily well-written novel by a multiple-award-winning author is highly recommended for readers from 9 to 90 years old.
P.S. Something else makes this story extraordinary: despite being told from the point of view of an eleven-year-old girl, it also quietly reveals the inner life of an elderly woman and leads to thought-provoking questions: What is more important: remembering the mundane minutiae of daily life or remembering the significant stories of the past? Who will remember our stories when we have passed and have we told them to anyone?
