Violette Between

This week's blog tour is for Violette Between by Alison Strobel.

From the book:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Alison Strobel graduated with a degree in elementary education, and in the summer of 2000 she moved from Chicago to southern California where she taught elementary school for three years. It was in Orange County that she met her husband, Daniel Morrow, and the story developed for her first novel, Worlds Collide.

Violette Between is a poinant story of a true artist. When the love of Violette's life, Saul suddenly died, she died too. Then she meets Christian, who also is morning the loss of a loved one.As Violette and Christian begin to feel something that they both thought was impossible, tragedy strikes again. Christian finds Violette on the floor of his waiting room, that she had been painting to look like a New York rooftop restaurant.

As Christian holds a vigil at her bedside, begging her to come back to him, Violette is in a coma, traveling to a place where she meets her beloved Saul. And she finds that she may not want to come back! What would it be like to choose a place between the past and the present?

From me:

What I enjoyed most about this novel was the ending. I was taken to a place that I wasn't expecting. I found it thought provoking, not only about choosing to love again after loss, but about learning how to leave the past behind to make room for the future. And before you say to yourself, “well, duh,” this is something I’ve only recently learned for myself.

One of the many things I have learned about myself as I have worked though my hoarding issues is that I was not just a hoarder of paper, bags, clothes, shoes, etc, but that much of my hoarding was an attempt to keep every memory of the past intact. This was manifested in the physical realm by boxes full of ticket stubs, playbills, Christmas cards, and totally random stuff that I was given from various people (like rubber bands, price stickers, etc.). I sorted through these boxes as we were making room for the twins, and I realized that most of it had lost all significance to me since I was delivered of my hoarding compulsion almost two years ago. I took five large plastic boxes of memories and condensed them into 2 and ½. I will probably be able to get rid of even more the next time I go through them.

I was keeping things in a box from a fear of forgetting my past rather than for any true sentimental reasons. Keeping the letters my husband sent me while we were dating makes sense. Keeping the rubber band that Josh gave me in the fifth grade doesn’t (actually, it’s kinda scary that I remember that). I threw away just about every card I’ve ever been given, but I kept my letters from my best friend M.J. (who shouldn’t feel bad if she throws my letters away, since that’s what normal people do). I threw away programs from dozens of concerts, but kept the ones I where I was a featured participant (which was a lot since I was a music major). And I kept all my high school band awards, having forgotten that I was voted outstanding flag corps member (several years), outstanding senior band person, and my academic and music letters. It is good for me to remember that I am at heart a musician, even though life and my own choices have taken me away from the music world.

So I won’t say I didn’t shed some tears as I did this necessary housecleaning, but they were the good kind of tears, good-bye tears. I am learning that I cannot allow the past to be the most important part of my now. I have found my memories to have much more meaning now that I don’t clutch them greedily. They have become a treasure instead of a burden. And I am still sometimes taken by pleasant surprise by the memories brought back by a song on the radio, a smell in the air, or even the weather.
But now I am looking forward to all the new memories I will be making with my family and making my peace with the past.