Julia J.'s Reviews > Bloomability

I read this for the first time when I was probably 10 years old and after that read it multiple times throughout my teenage years into young adulthood, and especially during times of transition or uncertainty. Gave it this most recent read-through because I will find myself in Switzerland this summer (!!!) and also I was trying to make a huge decision regarding my future while reading.

Hard to know how to say enough of my feelings without giving the whole book away! Dinnie (the narrator) made me feel so seen as a kid—she’s smart and observant and just loves her family even though they aren’t the most stable. Although the chance to attend a boarding school in Switzerland is a huge opportunity, for most of the book her main struggle is to balance enjoying what she has with the real pain of missing her loved ones and feeling lost and alone. Ultimately, the book is about her maturing and beginning to decide who she wants to be. Her growth is stimulated by the amazing side characters, who gradually become part of Dinnie’s family.

Much of the book is very slice-of-life, but it builds into a very emotionally impactful narrative. Some favorite parts:

Pg. 26-27
“On my way down the path from Montagnola, I was thinking about the two prisoners. It was a story that a boy, Guthrie, had told me the day before: There were two prisoners in a jail cell. They each looked out the same small window. One prisoner said, ‘Man oh man, what a lot of dirt!’ The other said, ‘Man oh man, what a lot of sky!’
“‘That’s it?’ I had said when Guthrie finished. ‘That’s all there is to the story?’
“‘Think about it,’ Guthrie said.”
And of course, when Dinnie understands the story, it’s one of the most important parts of the book.

Pg. 122 (after she receives a generous gift)
“I kept waking up throughout the night. I was uneasy about something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. And then I saw the skis. What was it about those skis?
“At about four o’clock in the morning, this is what I had decided: I hadn’t had to struggle for those skis. Someone had given them to me out of their own generosity, without my having struggled for them, without my having earned them.
“I thought maybe I should give them back and tell Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max that first I’d better earn the money for them. I’d wash floors and windows and chop wood and do all the laundry and all the cooking. What a struggle!
“But in the end, I decided that it was Christmas and people liked to be generous at Christmas, and maybe I ought to just accept this struggle-free gift. It might be hard to do—wait! That would be my struggle. I would struggle to accept their generosity. Yes, I would.
“I put a sign in my window: ‘grazie.’”

Pg. 261
“At that moment, I loved Switzerland completely. I loved it with every piece of me, with every hair on my head and every eyelash and every cell. I felt as if this was my home, and I was no longer a stranger. Instead, I was like the snail who carts his home along with him on his back, from place to place. I thought about my fishing in the streams and wondered if I was carting not only my home along with me, but also my family, too. If that was the case, I could take Switzerland and Guthrie and Lila and Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max and Keisuke and Belen and Mari—all of them—with me when I left.”

And of course many many more, but I’ll just let you read the book. I’ll love this book forever.