The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree Review

Children

📝 First Impressions

What stayed with me most about The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree was not a particular scene, but Mafalda’s fear.

She is still a child, yet she already knows that her world is gradually becoming smaller. Because of Stargardt disease, she is losing her sight, and the cherry tree in her schoolyard becomes an almost painfully simple way of measuring what is happening to her: how close does she need to get before she can still see it?

There is something especially unsettling about experiencing this through a child’s perspective. Mafalda understands enough to be frightened by what is coming, but she is still young enough to believe that perhaps she can somehow prepare for it by making lists, memorising things, and holding tightly to the places and people she loves.

I read this book some time ago, and many of the smaller details have faded from my memory. What has not faded is that feeling of watching a child try to understand what it means to lose something as fundamental as sight.

💜 What I Loved

What I appreciated most about The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree was the way Paola Peretti makes Mafalda’s fear feel real without turning the entire book into an exercise in sadness.

The premise could very easily have become overwhelmingly sentimental. A young girl is slowly losing her sight, she knows what is happening, and there is nothing she can do to stop it. That alone is enough to make the story emotionally heavy. But Mafalda is never reduced to her illness. She is still a child. She worries, gets frustrated, makes plans, becomes stubborn, notices things adults underestimate, and tries to find her own way of dealing with a future she cannot fully imagine.

That is probably the part that stayed with me most.

I don’t remember every scene anymore, and I think that is actually quite revealing. I read the book some time ago, so many of the smaller details have naturally disappeared from my memory. But I still remember Mafalda’s fear of going blind. I remember the cherry tree. I remember the feeling of her world slowly becoming smaller.

For me, that says more about the emotional impact of the book than being able to recount the plot chapter by chapter.

The cherry tree is also such a simple but effective symbol. It is not some complicated literary device that needs to be explained. Mafalda can either see it or she cannot. The distance between her and the tree becomes the distance between her and the life she has always known.

Every time that distance changes, the reader understands immediately what it means.

I also liked the fact that Mafalda tries to prepare herself for losing her sight by thinking about all the things she may no longer be able to do. There is something painfully childlike in that approach. Adults might think in terms of diagnoses, treatments, mobility, independence, or practical adaptations. Mafalda thinks about the things that make up her actual life: seeing the stars, playing, recognising familiar places, climbing her tree.

Those are the things that matter to her.

And because the story stays so close to her perspective, losing sight is never presented as an abstract medical problem. It is about losing access to all those tiny ordinary things that most of us barely notice because we assume they will always be there.

I found that particularly effective.

The book also reminded me how frightening uncertainty can be, especially for a child. Mafalda knows that her eyesight is deteriorating, but knowing something is going to happen is not the same as understanding what life will feel like afterwards. There is an enormous space between those two things, and much of the emotional tension comes from watching her try to fill that space with plans, fears and imagination.

At times she seems to believe that if she prepares enough, perhaps she can somehow control what is happening.

Of course she cannot.

But that need for control felt very believable to me.

There is also a tenderness in the way the people around Mafalda gradually become part of how she learns to live with what is happening. One of the things I liked was that the novel does not suggest that courage means doing everything alone. Mafalda does not suddenly become fearless. She does not magically stop being frightened because someone gives her a beautiful speech.

Instead, she slowly begins to understand that losing her sight does not mean losing everything else.

That distinction is important.

The book is sad, yes, but I would not describe it as hopeless. If anything, it is about learning that a life can change dramatically without becoming empty. Mafalda’s future will not look the way she expected it to, and she has every right to be angry and afraid about that. But there will still be people, memories, friendships, routines and new ways of experiencing the world.

I also think knowing that Paola Peretti herself lives with Stargardt disease gives the story an additional layer of authenticity. Mafalda’s fear never feels like it has been invented simply to make the reader cry. There is a specificity to it — the uncertainty, the frustration, the fixation on what she will still be able to see — that makes the emotional side of the story feel grounded rather than manipulative.

And perhaps that is why the book stayed with me.

Not because it shocked me.

Not because there was one enormous dramatic scene I could never forget.

But because the idea itself is so frighteningly simple: a child watching the visible world slowly disappear and trying to decide what she needs to remember before it does.

🤔 What Didn’t Quite Work for Me

As much as I appreciated the emotional core of The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree, I don’t think every part of the book stayed with me equally strongly.

The biggest sign of that is probably the fact that, looking back, I remember Mafalda’s fear very clearly, but I remember much less about the secondary characters and the individual events of the story. The emotional idea remained with me; the structure around it did not.

That does not necessarily mean the book failed. In fact, I think it says something about how focused the novel is on one central experience. Mafalda’s deteriorating eyesight dominates everything, and understandably so. But because of that, some of the people and situations around her became less distinct in my memory.

There is also a certain simplicity to the storytelling that will work better for some readers than for others.

This is very much a story told through a child’s perspective, and the language, emotions and conflicts reflect that. I think that simplicity is one of the reasons the book is accessible and moving, but it also means that readers looking for a more complex exploration of disability, family dynamics or grief may find parts of it a little straightforward.

I occasionally wanted the story to go deeper.

Not necessarily darker, and certainly not more dramatic, but deeper into the contradictions of what Mafalda is experiencing. Fear is rarely neat. Acceptance is even less so. There are moments when the emotional progression feels gentler and more orderly than real life usually is.

I would also say that the book sometimes comes close to being deliberately sentimental.

It never completely crossed that line for me, but I could see why another reader might feel differently. A child losing her sight, a beloved tree, lists of things she fears losing, adults trying to help her — these are emotionally powerful elements, and the novel knows exactly how to use them.

For me, the sincerity of Mafalda’s perspective prevented the story from becoming manipulative, but there were still moments when I could feel the book actively reaching for an emotional response.

And perhaps that is why my relationship with it now feels slightly unusual.

I remember being affected by it.

I remember feeling for Mafalda.

I remember the anxiety attached to that shrinking distance between her and the cherry tree.

But I do not remember finishing the book and feeling that I had discovered a story I would carry with me in every detail.

Instead, I carried one emotion.

Fear.

More specifically, the fear of knowing that something precious is disappearing and being completely unable to stop it.

That is powerful enough to make the book memorable, but it also means that, for me, the novel became more memorable as an emotional experience than as a fully realised story.

👥 Who Would Enjoy This Book

I think The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree will work especially well for readers who enjoy quiet, emotional stories told from a child’s perspective.

This is not a book built around twists, action, or a complicated plot. Its strength comes from watching Mafalda process something enormous in a very personal way. Because of that, I would recommend it to readers who are comfortable with slower, character-focused stories where the emotional journey matters more than what physically happens from chapter to chapter.

It would also suit readers who appreciate books about disability that focus on the person rather than the diagnosis.

Mafalda’s illness is central to the story, but she is never just “the girl who is losing her sight.” She is frightened, stubborn, imaginative, hopeful and sometimes determined to deal with things entirely on her own. That made her feel like a child first and a patient second, which I appreciated.

Younger readers may connect very directly with her fear of change and of losing the things that make her world feel safe. Adult readers, on the other hand, may experience the book slightly differently. There is something particularly painful about watching a child try to prepare herself for a future she does not yet know how to imagine.

I would especially recommend this to readers who enjoyed books where a seemingly ordinary object or place becomes emotionally important. Here, the cherry tree is much more than part of the schoolyard. It becomes a symbol of Mafalda’s shrinking vision, her fear, and eventually her ability to think about life beyond what she can physically see.

Readers who prefer emotionally restrained books should know that this one can become sentimental at times. It is clearly designed to make you feel something, and depending on your taste, that may either be one of its strengths or one of the things that keeps you at a little distance.

But if you enjoy heartfelt stories about resilience, childhood, fear and learning to adapt to a life you did not choose, I think there is a lot here to appreciate.

💭 Final Thoughts

The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree is one of those books that stayed with me more through its central emotion than through its individual scenes.

What I remember most clearly is Mafalda’s fear of going blind. Not in an abstract way, but in the very concrete, very childlike way she tries to understand what that will mean for her life. The cherry tree becomes part of that fear because it gives her something visible to measure against. As her eyesight worsens, the distance she needs to cover before she can still see the tree becomes smaller and smaller.

That image stayed with me.

There is something deeply affecting about a child trying to prepare for a future she cannot fully imagine. Mafalda knows that her sight is disappearing, but knowing something is going to happen does not make it easier to understand what life will feel like afterwards. Much of the book lives in that space between knowing and accepting.

I also appreciated that the story never treats courage as the absence of fear. Mafalda is afraid, and she has every reason to be. What matters is that, gradually, she begins to understand that losing her sight will change her life without erasing it.

That distinction is probably the most important thing the novel leaves behind.

I may not remember every secondary character or every event anymore, but I still remember the cherry tree, the shrinking distance, and the feeling of a world becoming harder to see.

For me, that is enough to make the book memorable.

It is a gentle, emotional story, sometimes a little sentimental, but never empty. At its best, it captures something very simple and very frightening: the moment when a child realises that something fundamental is changing and that there is no way to stop it.

And yet the book is not really about losing everything.

It is about learning that there is still a life beyond the loss.

✨ The BookFairy Verdict