Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry (Clarion, 2024) features the friendship between two Sophies: one who is eleven and the other is 88. With a unique and memorable narrator, Lowry’s deceptively short newest offering touches on deep issues such as aging, childhood experience, and the formation of memories. In fact, there was so much in it that I really wished Sophie-the-younger’s journey was stretched out a bit longer to let me see more of the friendship and Sophie’s understanding of memories that matter.
Our narrator, the younger Sophie, is a spunky girl with confidence, sure that she not only can tell this story but also that she can solve the issue. She’s smart. How can you not love a girl who begins like this?
“You know what? It’s not that hard to write a story. You need all the obvious stuff: characters, setting, plot details (what happened, why it happened, what’s going to happen next) and, of course, an ending. That’s it, pretty much. . . . “
In the subsequent story, she tells of her desperation to prove her older friend’s competence by helping her with a memory test. The result is not quite what she expected. I thought, as reader, that I knew what the result would be, that the old woman’s dementia will be made plain. I felt sad, even from the beginning, that Sophie will eventually realize her friend’s issue too. But the book instead plays with the entire concept of memory.
The title refers to the three items that Sophie is trying to help the elderly woman remember. In a dementia test, the subject is given three random items and must recall them five minutes later. To help her, Sophie asks her friend to think of a story to go around each item, so she can remember it later. The girl must only have been surprised to hear the old woman’s responses, which are fully fleshed out stories from her childhood in Poland. Each of the three stories the old woman shares (tree, table, and book) is remembered with setting, people, and emotion. Poland remains within the old woman’s mind as if it were just the other day.
These stories were the most touching part of the book, as I, along with young Sophie, learned about the old woman’s childhood as Shlomit. The action in the modern day (Sophie talking with her friend Ralphie, the phone calls she overhears, etc.) are just side notes to these three memories. As the adult reader surely realizes, these memories are related to events happening before World War II, and Shlomit was a Jewish girl in Poland, one who survived to be 88 in the modern day.
I wanted so much more from this book. I wanted to know more about their friendship. But I also wanted to know more about the elderly sophie’s life, and how she had survived to be where she was. That said, I was pleased to see that our young Sophie didn’t get everything she wanted. She was a quite outspoken person. Her character gave the book the sincerity that it so needed for such a story. Maybe the fact that she did not get what she wanted should be an example to me in my wanting of more from the book. The book makes the reader consider what memory is. What are the things to remember, and are the little things really worth remembering?
As a teacher (a writing teacher!) I was fascinated with the writer’s cues throughout the book. Ideas on finding ideas (think about the day that was different), ideas on what a story needs (see the quote above), and examples of an amazing narrator. Lowry’s newest novel is a fantastic sample of writing, in addition to being an emotional treat.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance review copy of this book provided by the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
