The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes by Ruth Hogan

In Ruth Hogan's The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, we meet Masha, a woman overwhelmed by the death of her small child twelve years ago. Surrounded by supportive friends, she has found a way to function within her grief, but not to move on from it. She spends all her free time either in the local public pool, imagining what it must feel like to drown or walking among the headstones in the cemetery. It is here that she comes to meet an eccentric woman who isn't always in control of her words that she calls Sally Red Shoes. Sally helps her see life in a completely different way.

This book if filled with lovely characters, quirky and strange as some of them may be. Grief is a hard story to tell, but I appreciate that Hogan makes it clear that there isn't a right amount of time to grieve and that it comes and goes in waves. She doesn't shy away from discussions of death, but still adds a sprinkle of humor to soften the blow. I liked this book and I think you will, too.

I'll leave you with this bit of wisdom from its pages:

However fit, fabulous, rich, double-jointed, brilliant, brave, funny or fastidious about cleaning our teeth we are, we are all going to die.

Your problem is that you are too lazy, too scared or too stupid to spend the time leading up to your death living. Really living. Do something!... Preferably for someone else.... The clock is ticking.