Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
I love a book that can effectively take me into a completely different paradigm; one that can shift my way of thinking about my own reality. Margarita Montimore does precisely this for me in Oona Out of Order (Flatiron).
Oona has an unheard-of condition that results in her having to live her life out of sequence. One year, she’s eighteen. The next, she’s fifty-one. There’s no way to anticipate the year she is going to wake up in each New Year’s Day.
By experiencing parts of her future, she is able to understand the transient nature of relationships and go back to appreciate them in the years she has them.
Oona experiments with the idea of going back and manipulating her past, especially once she’s had a chance to see how things might transpire unfavorably later on.
So many lessons can be learned from this story. I particularly enjoyed watching Oona learn the concept of living with no regrets; having the ability to change the course of your life, but choosing not to. Oona inspired me with the possibility of being happy, living fully in the moment with whatever circumstances I am given, and with whoever is present, without allowing physical age to be a limitation to my existence. She taught me that there need to be moments of pride as well as disappointment in order to sustain the equilibrium of life. So, in unfavorable moments, there is always something to look forward to.
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