Books that Changed Me: The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie Sue Hitchcock
Sometimes I review a book the moment I finish it. Fresh details, sharp recollections. Other times I like to wait, let a book seep into me and become something—part me, part what was on the page. I chose to do the latter with The Smell of Other People’s Houses.
What lingers long, long after reading is a feeling of compassion, gentle sadness mixed with humor, longing. I want to go to this far flung “exotic” place, because it felt so familiar, so comfortable in its uniqueness, known. I felt at home in Hitchcock’s world, understood and understanding. I felt myself in her characters. I am the girl who can’t trust goodness. I am the boy who needs to run away.
The mark of a powerful book is its capacity to change the reader. I felt understood, and yes, changed.
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Sometimes I review a book the moment I finish it. Fresh details, sharp recollections. Other times I like to wait, let a book seep into me and become something—part me, part what was on the page. I chose to do the latter with The Smell of Other People’s Houses.
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Rebecca has been writing since childhood, her first book about a kitten published between homemade cardboard covers in second grade. Although she studied religion and philosophy in university, she continued writing, earning an MFA from Hamline University and publishing multiple picture books (no longer with homemade covers) and a collection of poetry with a variety of New York and independent publishers. She has also published a wide array of fiction, essays, and poetry in magazines and journals and photographs for Getty Images. She balances writing with homeschooling the younger of her six children, launching her young adults, church activities, and overseeing a small flock of chickens in rural West Michigan.
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