The House With Chicken Legs by Sophie Anderson

The House With Chicken Legs by Sophie Anderson is a beautifully written novel that is somehow uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time. The main character, a girl named Marinka, lives in a house with her grandmother, a Yaga. Her grandmother, who she calls baba, guides the dead into the afterlife and is a guardian of the gate between life and death. The two travel the world in their house with chicken legs, traveling from place to place to calm the dead into the afterlife.

Regardless, Markinka isn’t happy with this lifestyle. Since they never stay in one spot for longer than a month, Marinka isn’t able to make friends and rarely ever has human contact apart from her grandma. Marinka is also told that she must be a Yaga like her grandma. A job she most certainly doesn’t want. Marinka wants to be able to do what she likes, not what someone else tells her to do.

However, one day, against her baba’s rules, she steps outside the boundaries of their property and meets with a boy named Benjamin. Marinka and Benjamin instantly bond over their love for Jack, Marinka’s pet jackdaw, and their loneliness. Benjamin doesn’t have very many friends and neither does Marinka. Benjamin even gives Marinka a pet lamb, but later that week, when Benjamin goes back to where the house used be he finds that it disappeared, and when Marinka wakes up that morning she hates her house for taking them so far away from Benjamin her only friend.

You can feel Marinka’s excitement when a few days later, she finds out that one of the dead named Nina who has not yet been guided is in her room and they too, become friends. Marinka asks lots of questions about the Nina’s life and she always answers them as best as she can. Sadly, Marinka knows that one day the ghost will have to pass through the portal to the afterlife, Marinka just didn’t know how troublesome it would be.

When it comes time for the ghost to go, Nina has faded so much that she isn’t able to make the journey into the afterlife on her own. Marinka’s grandmother then has to take Nina in with her, but the living aren’t meant to go into the portal, so it’s very possible that Marinka’s baba will never come out again, Marinka has to learn how to guide the dead on her own and figure out a way to save her grandmother. Can she do it?

Anderson has a beautiful writing style, somehow able to restore your heart and break it in one sentence. She is also extremely skilled at making the reader feel empathetic for any of the characters. This is a wonderfully written book, and maybe one of the most unique of all the books I have reviewed.