Mirjam Pressler, 'When Happiness Comes, Offer It a Chair.'

'Halinka.' The protagonist girl's name is 'Halinka.' I don't want to do the work of searching for the meaning of the name or digging into its origin. Somehow, if I try to write my impressions of a book after investigating each and every thing like that, it feels a bit stifling, should I say..... But at least my personal impressions should be fine to write. If I were to state the feeling of the word 'Halinka' to me personally, I could say it's 'very lively and bold.' At least within the range of my thinking, if I were to see a foreign adult with the name 'Halinka,' I think I'd find the name odd. Should I say its peculiar nuance seems to express 'innocence' or being untainted? The 'Halinka' in the content seems to have a slightly rough-and-tumble side.

This child always keeps the words of 'Aunt Lou' in her head. This trait of hers felt very similar to me. (Maybe it's similar to everyone..) Unfortunately for me (?), my head never empties out. A state of 'emptiness' or 'void' never comes to me. So in the past I felt it was good to keep thinking like this, but lately I haven't felt so good about it. Rather, I'm at the point of going crazy because thoughts won't disappear. Surely the existence called 'ease' could fill my heart at least once, but that doesn't happen. Whether it's a 'positive' thought that makes me happy, or a 'negative' thought that makes me struggle and feel sad. Only, here, Aunt Lou appears to Halinka as a 'positive' existence. So Halinka seems to gain a bit more strength. Fortunately, the scene where 'Halinka' says she was abused by her own mother when she was young came in the latter half, so I came to understand, at least a little, why 'Halinka' had no choice but to like and follow Aunt Lou.

Among childhood memories, things that were so wounding that the wound remained stay like an inextractable thorn in the heart, as 'trauma.' I, too, have several such wounds in my heart. There are many that are truly hard to talk about. When I was young I never even imagined they would remain this long, but now that I've become a university student and look at the bad childhood memories that get dredged up unintentionally like this, I'm just endlessly upset and heartsick. Because these memories remained in 'Halinka's' heart like an inextractable thorn, Aunt Lou must have come across to 'Halinka' all the more as 'happiness.'

There was one point that was both fascinating and somewhat pleasing as I read. It's precisely the part where Halinka's reluctance to make friends appears. The biggest reason was probably that she didn't feel the necessity. Not most children think this way, but in a way I figured it's probably because she was a child with a clear sense of what she had to protect... that's what I thought. What's quite paradoxical is that a friend named 'Renate' existed for such a Halinka, and Halinka wants to make this Renate her 'little sister.' Then, at the moment when they had a chance to grow close, Renate too comes to say she'd thought it would be nice to have an 'older sister,' and this scene where they grow close to each other seemed to convey, at the same time, the fickleness and the innocence of a child. Should I say it represented the author's feeling about what 'growth' is?

In that it's a book I read while making notes in my note for the first time in a while (it's a notebook that holds all of me. From schedules, to memos, diary, finance management, postcards, ticket receipts, and so on), I think I can fully assign it value. -Aunt Lou, you're right. If the inside of your head is dark, your heart can't be bright either. Aunt Lou, has the inside of your head ever once been dark?- After writing down this part, the memories I thought about for a while seem like they'll be a strength to me for the time being.