by Pat Brisson
솔직히 책 겉표지만 잠깐 스쳐지나쳤다면 살펴보지 않았을 책인데, 책안을 보니 괜찮을것 같아 선택한 책이었어요.
그리고 아주 좋은 선택을 했습니다.
페이지는 적지만, 많은 감동과 교훈을 주었거든요.
에밀리가 암으로 돌아가신 어머니와의 추억을 담은 글이예요.
엄마와 함께 아름다운 하늘에 관에 좋은 추억을 간직하는 장면들은 마음이 따뜻한 한편, 앞으로 다가올 엄마의 죽음 때문인지 슬프기도 한답니다.
회색빛 구름 사이로 조그맣게 푸른 하늘이 비추이는 모습이나, 석양의 모습...
그리고 아름다운 달밤등 두 모녀의 좋은 추억은 입가에 미소를 짓게 해요.
영어가 쉽고, 내용도 감동적이어서 원서를 읽어보고 싶으신 분에게 추천하고 싶습니다.
[책표지]
[잿빛 하늘속에 보이는 맑고 푸른하늘]
[눈오늘날의 가로등 - 모녀지간에 기억하고 있는 하늘에 관한 추억]
[소녀는 쓸쓸해보이는 이 풍경이 어머니는 아름답다고 한다.]
[무지개빛 하늘]
[엄마가 죽던날 본 하늘... 너무 아름답지만 엄마는 끝내 보지 못하고..]
Through the first-person narrative of an 11-year-old girl, this brief hand-sized volume collects a daughter's memories of her mother's year-long descent into death from cancer. Emily and her mother begin a tradition of making "sky memories" the day before the woman is diagnosed. The snapshots they "click" in their minds evolve from one of gray sky with the merest patch of blue ("Large enough to mend a Dutchman's breeches," her mother says) to bleaker subjects, such as bare, skeleton-like trees against a setting sun, as Emily's fragile belief that her mother can beat her illness changes to a recognition that it will lead to her death. While Brisson's (The Summer My Father Was Ten) images aptly parallel the mother's eroding health, readers never really get to know Emily, so that the text becomes a means for connecting one sky memory to the next in a kind of poetic melancholy. The author drops some hints about Emily's thoughtsA"I didn't play softball that spring" or "It was at times like those that I wished I had a father"Abut never delves much more deeply into how the girl feels about submerging her life in deference to her mother. Without such details, it may be hard for readers to imagine how Emily's life will go on after her mother's inevitable end (despite her favorite aunt stepping in as guardian); this approach stirs up more anxiety than it delivers reassurance. Minor's (Arctic Son) dramatic watercolors focus on the sky memories, rather than on mother and daughter, further enhancing the feeling of the book as a meditation on death.