Oddbody by Rose Keating Reading Journal

This story confused me quite a bit. When I finished it, I genuinely wasn't sure what I was supposed to take away from it. But the more I thought about it the more interesting it became.

For a while, I actually thought Saoirse was dead. There were all these descriptions of moss, leaves, and branches, and I started imagining that she was somehow already part of earth. That Bela was some kind of companion guilding her through death, while they continued pretending she was still living at home with her mother. I am not sure why that interpretation made so much sense to me when I was reading, but it did.

What interested me the most, though, was Bela's ability to stop time. The idea that everything could simply pause, that they could stay in one moment forever, initially seemed almost comforting. Nothing would have to change. Nothing would have to end. And Bela seemed to want that. But Saoirse didn't. She still was curious about growing older, about what she would look like in the future. And I found that strangley beautiful. Because growing older also means experiencing things you can't control. People leave, things change and eventually people and animals die. But she still wanted to experience whatever came next.

I think the scene with the cat was what made me start understanding the story differently. It was such a sad moment. She was alone, desperatly trying to contact her mother, and there was nothing she could do. I kept wondering why she didn't go to a neighbor or ask someone else for help. The only people she seemed to think of where her mother and Bela. And that made her feel incredibly lonely to me.

I also wondered whether the cat's death brought up feelings about her father, whom she'd never met. Maybe the loss of the cat made her confort something she'd already been living with, the absence of someone she couldn't bring back or perhaps had never really had the chance to know. I don't know whether that's what Keating intended, but it's where my mind went.

And I keep coming back to the contrast between Saoirse and Bela. One seems to want everything to stay exactly as it is. The other still wants to grow up, even without knowing what that means..

Maybe that's what the story is about. The temptation to stay somewhere safe and familiar, and the decision to keep living even though nothing can stay the same forever.