I totally enjoyed this slim novel. ‘Theodora’s Gift’ is a great story and shows a complex world of relationships and events past and future that many young people will relate to. For those who keep a diary as I do this extract

“Theodora had kept a diary, more or less, since she had learned to write. Theodora was the sort of person who paid attention to things. So much attention that she found she couldn’t keep it all inside her head, and that was how she had started keeping a diary.
She wrote everything down, everything, everything, everything. Everything that is, that she saw or heard, which if you think about it, leaves quite a lot of everything out.” (p7,8)

may make you think about what everything, everything, everything, you write.

I don’t write what I see and hear, I realised when I read this and thought about it. Although I possibly include some of it to explain why I think and feel. I write what I am thinking about constantly or feeling. As a result my diary is boring and repetitive at times. I keep it because like the character Theodora, I can’t keep it all inside my head and it makes me feel better to get it down on paper. Sometimes it helps me to move on. It often allows me to realise I am going around in circles or obsessing and often when I wonder if I have experienced something before, I can check and see that a pattern has formed. It does have it’s uses.

I still think it would be more interesting if I wrote down what I saw and heard!