The House Without Windows

 

If you are a parent to a wild child, I suggest reading this book to your child—not as a bedtime story but as something you read to them on sunny picnic days. The book is built for the outdoors. I picked this up from the children’s literature section of the library.

I was impressed by the title and the cover page (Oh yeah, I do judge books by their cover pages). What else do I have before I dig deep through the pages? It is fascinating that this book was written by a 12-year-old girl. Barbara typed this novel on her father’s typewriter when she was 12 and lost it in a fire accident. She rewrote the manuscript in one year again and published it when she was 13 years old. I have to tell you this: I took the book off the shelf thinking that I genuinely needed to get a glimpse of what was inside her head. I wanted a sneak peek into her imagination, and the book didn’t disappoint at all.

The story is about a little kid leaving her home, parents, and everything she knew behind, to live in nature. It is remarkably striking how nature unravels its mysterious beauty in a child’s mind. Throughout the journey of the three-year-old, the author, paints the wild beauty of forests, magical visuals, and sensory experiences from the seasons. As an adult, I was expecting Eepersip, the little girl, to miss her family and come back to her home. But I think young Barbara’s mind was far beyond the boundaries of civilisation, she built and let her character fly away with the wind. Beyond experiencing nature, beyond blending with seasons, little Barbara’s character merges with nature and transforms into something like a fairy, or let me call it a sort of salvation. Somehow the end reminded me of the endings of books like ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ and ‘Eleven Minutes.’. One moment you are fighting with a lot that is not exactly like you while chasing your dream. The next moment, you realise you have been transformed into something more than you dreamt. Along with achieving your dream, your journey carved you into something poetic, as if you could hear the rhythm of your soul mesmerising the universe.

It was incredible that a 12-year-old wrote this piece of literature. But what do we know? We are ruined by growth and knowledge. Barbara Newhall Follet lived an eventful life, embracing all the turbulence of her intelligent mind. She disappeared when she was 25. She walked away from her flat after a fight with her husband, and no one ever saw her after that. Great and brave souls need the littlest of time to leave a mark on this earth and walk away from a life that others consider bliss.