Comedy of Life in Brooklyn

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store 

by James McBride

“Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world.”   ― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store





James McBride's 381-page novel The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store combines elements of group comedy, cultural history, thriller, and love story. The story takes place in Pottstown, Pennsylvania's dilapidated Chicken Hill neighborhood, where African Americans and Jewish immigrants coexist and work side by side. The book tells the story of the people who live in Chicken Hill, how they make ends meet despite being marginalized by the larger white population, and how the country is changing quickly, as witnessed by those who were formerly enslaved and others who have recently arrived.

The author's prose style is elegant, and his development of individual characters is exceptional, providing a realism for his story that few novelists attain. I enjoyed this novel as much as his wonderful Good Lord Bird, and I look forward to more novels from James McBride.

Intelligent Mischief

  

Tartuffe 

by Molière

“Beauty without intelligence is like a hook without bait.”   ― Molière, Tartuffe








One of the most divisive comedies ever written, Tartuffe was the focus of the biggest censorship dispute of the 17th century. Molière's remarkably beautiful drama concerning religious belief fundamentally altered the purposes and goals of comedy. It was extremely brave, if not foolish, of Molière to humorously tackle such a subject in a religiously sensitive era that still dealt with heresy at the stake. Tartuffe may have struck a nerve when his detractors interpreted the play's portrayal of religious hypocrisy and fake piety as an assault on religion in general. Still raw from Tartuffe's sting, it is easy to criticize the prejudice and blindness of his contemporaries. At the time of his passing, Molière's fellow clergymen were still resentful of Tartuffe. But the drama still manages to jolt and move spectators in tender places, and the urgency of being able to discern genuine devotion from fakery is as great now as it was in 17th-century France.

Moliere demonstrated that the caricatures of farce facilitated rather than hindered the investigation of human nature and social experience, and that both comedy and tragedy could delve into profound psychological depths and fundamental human concerns. His was a unique character comedy that drew laughs heartily at the mistakes and pretenses of human nature while portraying modern manners in a lifelike manner. Not everyone found it funny.

Rewarding Stories

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy 

by James Purdy

“Just like children, he and the greatwoman Grainger longed, and especially demanded even, that something should happen, or again Parkhearst would cry, “A reward, I must have a reward. A reward for life just as I have lived it.”   ― James Purdy, The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

These stories just happen to take place here. That they happen in America and feel very American on the surface still allows room for depths of meaning that suggest the archetypal. I am reminded of the southern Gothic world of Flannery O'Connor without the religion. His thoroughly idiosyncratic writing leaves trails of peculiar, odd, eccentric characters that make their way through a world that is a skewed version of every town. Usually every town is more like Thornton Wilder than David Lynch.

When I first came across Purdy, it was through his enigmatic and unsettling vision of Eustace Chisholm. However, his sharper focus became apparent in his smaller works, such as Malcolm and The Nephew. The stories in this collection range from fairy tales about an opera diva whose mega-stardom is cleverly managed by her talking cat to the story of the young girl who escapes with a fire-breathing dragon to eat turtle soup; from an unusual story of a desperate husband whose fixation on a rare white dove results from his obsession over his wayward ex-wife to a visit to Moe's Villa, a private mansion that doubles as a gambling casino where the Native American owner teaches lonely boys the game of poker.

Gore Vidal called him "an authentic American genius.". For Vidal, himself given to the fantastic, Purdy's stories contained "lost or losing golden ephebes.". This collection is a welcome feast for fans of Purdy, as well as a nice taste for newcomers.

When the bizarre is the norm, your nightmares become mere dreams, yet what wonderful dreams! This collection of short stories is just that—a myriad of prose poems engaging your soul and fulfilling needs beyond your imagined life. All you need is to sit back, read, and enjoy!

Family Nostalgia

Tom Lake 

by Ann Patchett

“I look at my girls, my brilliant young women. I want them to think I was better than I was, and I want to tell them the truth in case the truth will be useful. Those two desires to not neatly coexist, but this is where we are in the story.”   ― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Ann Patchett's 309-page novel Tom Lake explores the transient aspects of life, love, and death. The narrative centers on a mother who, while under COVID-19 quarantine, tells her grown children about her first love. The book investigates what it means to be content when everything around you is collapsing. One notable aspect of the novel was the influence of the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder.

This is not my first Ann Patchett novel, but it's the first that I have enjoyed, at least in part. As always, her book is well written and readable, but I began to lose interest in the narrative about halfway through the book. By the end, I wished that I had spent my time rereading Our Town, or one of Thornton Wilder's delightful novels.

Two Artists

Peacock & Vine: 

On William Morris 

and Mariano Fortuny 

by A.S. Byatt

“If Morris and his contemporaries were possessed by the medieval Christian imagination and the ancient sagas, the moderns looked further back to the ancient world, and rewrote the Greek myths and legends to suit their own ideas about society and history.”   ― A.S. Byatt, Peacock & Vine: On William Morris and Mariano Fortuny

It would be wonderful to be an artist whose life and work flowed together seamlessly, like water in a river, because your existence would be so complete. Peacock and Vine is a brief but frequently engrossing meditation on the lives of William Morris (1834–1896) and Mariano Fortuny (1871–1949), two people who succeeded in achieving this goal.

I'm still waiting for my invitation to visit Venice, but in the meantime, I can luxuriate in the prose and illustrations of Ms. Byatt's fine art biography. With a mix of criticism and history, she takes the familiar, William Morris, and the less familiar, Mariano Fortuny, and highlights their lives and work with the interpolation of beautiful illustrations. This was a pleasingly informative short excursion into the world of art. The quotes from Ruskin and Proust were an added delight.

Lost in Africa

Scoop 

by Evelyn Waugh

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.”   ― Evelyn Waugh, Scoop








Scoop (London, 1938) by Evelyn Waugh is a satire on journalism. It is based on Waugh's 1935 assignment to cover the conflict between Abyssinia and Italy while working as a war correspondent for the London Daily Mail in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). Waugh acknowledged that he was not very good at covering wars, but he did keep a close eye on what his fellow reporters were doing. The outcome was a comedic and satirical novel that mocks the newspaper industry and the journalism profession with a playful yet decidedly deadly tone.

The story centers upon a few humorous turns of events. Lord Copper, the conceited and uneducated proprietor of the Daily Beast, inadvertently dispatches William Boot, a naive nature columnist, to cover the conflict in the made-up nation of Ishmaelia in East Africa. At least geographically speaking, Ishmaelia and Abyssinia are identical. William learns a few fast lessons on the crafty methods used by journalists, who are constantly attempting to outsmart their peers and break a story. William returns to London as a well-known reporter after receiving many significant scoops on his own thanks to a string of fortunate events. However, all of it is meaningless to him, and he is glad to be going back to his remote and run-down country house, Boot Magna Hall, where his numerous eccentric relatives reside. Overall this is still an entertaining comedic read.

Colonial Tale

Tropic Moon 

by Georges Simenon

“My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven’t read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may — need is the word I use — to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill’s history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.”  ― Roger Ebert

Tropic Moon, one of Georges Simenon's "Romans durs," or hard novels, is his first book set outside of Europe. The story of Tropic Moon is not only harsh on the protagonist but also on the French colonial system as a whole—that is, it is extremely harsh on the French colonialists who lived in Africa. This was a slightly different experience for me compared to Simenon's detective novels.

Apolline vs. Dionysian

The Birth of Tragedy 

and The Case of Wagner 

by Friedrich Nietzsche

“Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.”   ― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche not only narrates the origin of tragedy, but he also offers a postmortem that identifies its killers. According to Nietzsche, with Euripides' help and encouragement, Socrates destroyed this pinnacle of Greek culture. However, Nietzsche goes on to predict that Wagnerian opera will bring about its revival, at least in Germany. The ideas of Schopenhauer and Kant indicate that the rationalism that was introduced by Socrates and ultimately led to the abolition of tragedy has run its course and reached its limits, which means that the time is right for tragedy to reappear. Pace logic apart, the thing itself demonstrates that it is fundamentally unknown.

Nietzsche's analysis identifies the Apolline and the Dionysian artistic tendencies that are united in Greek tragedy. In contrast to the Dionysian, who offers chaos, intoxication, obscurity, excess, and fusion, the Apolline symbolizes clarity, beauty, order, shape, and individuation. Greek tragedy—at least the works by Aeschylus and Sophocles—exposes its audience to existential horrors like fate's hand, the impotence of even the most admirable people, and the certainty of suffering. It rises above the pit of sorrow and pessimism, however, to affirm life in the end, or at the very least, to affirm aesthetic force and its capacity to redeem pain and suffering, by crafting these brutal facts into a great work of art.

Regrets from Time Past

I Have Some Questions for You 

by Rebecca Makkai

“it was easier to believe she was lying than that lightning loves a scarred tree.”   ― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You

This was a real challenge for me from beginning to end. I can't say that I was thrilled to read this book, even though I managed to slowly proceed through it. I was not inspired to flip the pages, and I wished the story had been more interesting. I persisted because I don't give up easily and was curious to find out what really happened before the murder and if justice would be served in the end. Unfortunately, the second-person narration didn't exactly work for this particular story, and I frequently felt like the prose was wandering.

I can say that, without giving too much away, I was quite impressed by how true to reality the novel was. Even though we always want our books to have poetic justice and perfect endings, this one chose a conclusion that, although not perfect, may be more realistic than what actually happens. That having been said, I cannot recommend this novel, as I felt it had too many flaws.

A Historic Moment

The Magic Lantern:          The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague 

by Timothy Garton Ash

“In this crowded world, we must learn to navigate by speech, as ancient mariners taught themselves to sail across the Aegean Sea.”   ― Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World

Written by a brilliant witness who also took part in epochal events, The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that defines a historic moment. Covering events such as the first free parliamentary elections in Poland, where Solidarity was forced to try and limit the extent of its victory, or attending the meetings of an unlikely alliance of Catholic clerics and free-thinking intellectuals planning the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with a great deal of empathy and impact.

This book is a stunningly evocative portrait of the revolutions that swept Communism from Eastern Europe in 1989 and whose aftereffects are still being felt today. From the perspective of more than three decades, Garton Ash writes in a sharp afterword, "Freedom's battle is never fully won. It must be fought anew in every generation.” I would recommend this to all readers who are interested in modern European history.

Do Humans Want to be Good?

All Art is Propaganda:

 Critical Essays 

by George Orwell

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”   ― George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays









All Art is Propaganda is a collection of George Orwell's essays bound by the theme of philosophical and aesthetic commentary. It includes such masterpieces as "Propaganda and Demotic Speech," "Charles Dickens," and "Rudyard Kipling." Of particular interest in our political enthused year are the essays addressing the nature of propaganda; both directly in "Propaganda and Demotic Speech," and somewhat tangentially in "Politics and the English Language," the latter of which is more important and contains many insightful statements like "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better."

I hope that some of the many readers of Orwell's novels will take the time to savor their fine prose. Orwell's essays are always both enlightening and interesting on each of the disparate topics he addresses. The usage of political speech in the twenty-first century is proof enough of Orwell's claim. Thoughtful criticism, such as Orwell's, is woefully lacking in our current day, particularly among practicing politicians and their supporters.

Scientific Woman

Lessons in Chemistry 

by Bonnie Garmus

“Whenever you start doubting yourself, whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change and change is what we're chemically designed to do.”   - ― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

My experience reading this book was at times unpleasant since the characters were often caricatures and the events appeared forced, especially when they were opposed to Elizabeth Zott, the main character, a scientist. So, even though the book was very readable and difficult for me to put down, this reduced my enjoyment of it.

The main character of Elizabeth, however, really pulls this book together. Elizabeth is not only intelligent, but also incredibly rational, pragmatic, and level-headed; she just won't accept being underestimated. She continues to defy the restrictions that some (sometimes it seems like everyone) would place on her due to her sex, telling her audience that "the reduction of women to something less than men...is not biological; it's cultural." Not so much because she defies these boundaries but because she recognizes their absurdity and acts appropriately, which made me fall in love with her. It is the absurdity of some situations that provides a level of comic relief in what is often a very dark story.

The novel's opening chapters, which seem almost like they were written for a young adult readership, highlight the author's straightforward writing style. Although the approach becomes less obvious as the story goes on, some readers might become disinterested before the action truly picks up. The characters that surround Elizabeth also lack complexity; for the most part, the "good" ones are all very wise and helpful, while the evil characters are naive and malicious; I thought this distracted from the message of the book. Lastly, a lot of the storyline, especially the fairytale conclusion, is highly dependent on coincidence. These aspects detracted from what I otherwise found to be a pleasant read.

Insights and Discoveries

The Heart in Exile 

by Rodney Garland

"It was all clear now, or at least as clear as it could be. I had discovered and could explain many things, but there was so much, of course, that I could never hope to explain."  - Rodney Garland, The Heart in Exile

Although this book is a mystery set in the gay community of post-World War II London, it is much more than that. It explores the nature of love and the very personal truths experienced by homosexuals, as well as the gay life, which was necessarily an underworld in London at the time. It is this second aspect of the book that allows it to rise above the average sentimental story. This book is intensely about the lives of a psychiatrist and his former lover, who was found dead from what appeared to be an overdose of sleeping pills. The doctor's investigation into what happened led to revelations about himself that profoundly affected his life.

This book, which examined the variety of homosexual life in London and offered a touching account of how one might transform his life in unexpected ways when faced with the ups and downs of daily existence, captivated me. It was both fascinating and profoundly touching.

Interesting but Unconvincing

Trust 

by Hernan Diaz

“they all believed, without any sort of doubt, that they deserved to be heard, that their words ought to be heard, that the narratives of their faultless lives must be heard. They all had the same unwavering certainty my father had. And I understood that this was the certainty that Bevel wanted on the page.”   ― Hernan Diaz, Trust

This novel is an interesting blend of different genres, spanning historical fiction, autobiography, and critical memoir. In addition to facing the lies that frequently lie at the core of interpersonal relationships, the imagined might of capitalism, and the ease with which power may corrupt facts, Trust is part an engrossing story and part an attempt to construct a literary puzzle. 

I found the first two sections interesting reading, especially as they read like a fantasy of a superman of finance. However, the final sections did not impress. With the unsatisfying sections just hanging on to the somewhat dull but interesting first two parts, the whole was ultimately unconvincing as a modernist literary construct.

Sunday Poetry Selection

Paul Celan

Paul Celan was not an easy man—why would he be?—and his poetry, as his translator Michael Hamburger writes, is not easy either. Celan, Hamburger says, “calls for an application and effort so intense that it may have to be broken off and resumed over the years.” That is definitely true of “Death Fugue.” It is hard to take in without a break. But to take in even a portion of it is to have taken in something unforgettable. Celan wrote almost exclusively in German, so it makes sense that his most successful poem, "Todesfuge," or “Death Fugue," is in the language of the Nazi death machine. Here is a selection:

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night

we drink you at noon in the morning we drink you at sundown

we drink and we drink you

a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents

He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master from 

            Germany

he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke

            you will rise into air

then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined

(from "Death Fugue" by Paul Celan)

A Commonplace Entry

 

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry longes; And specially from every shires ends Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blissful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

- from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Top Ten Books for 2023

 Annual Top Ten Favorites

 Top Ten Favorite Books of 2023

Since January 1, 2023, these books have been my favorites.  They span a wide range of reading genres, from non-fiction to fiction, from lengthy to short works, and from the Classics to modern literary fiction.  The inclusion of Samuel Beckett's Trilogy is one example of an exception, and the pairing of Cormac McCarthy's two last novels because they enhanced one another is another. If I were to enlarge my list, I could have included more novels from this year, which was a really rich reading year.  Even though the other works were excellent, these ten will be with me for a long time; in fact, I reread the Faulkner and Ellison volumes. 

The list is in no particular order, but if I had to pick my favorite of the year it would be Three Novels by Samuel Beckett. I read these together as one book in the final months of the year and they stand out as the most powerful novels I have read in a long time. They have joined the other classics on my top ten books of all time. 

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen

Independent People by Halldor Laxness

Landscape: Memory by Matthew Stadler

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The Passenger / Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

All Down Darkness Wide by  Sean Hewitt

The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine

The City of God by Augustine of Hippo

The Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

A Modern Trilogy

Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable 

by Samuel Beckett

“In other words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said it was never enough and always too much.”   ― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

Beckett's three great novels like his plays, break new ground in their structure and narrative. A bleak emptiness hovers throughout the three novels that one may consider a sort of trilogy. I was mesmerized from the opening pages of Molloy and wondered what it was in this bleak indeterminacy that was so beguiling. Reading slowly and closely I slowly found a method in this seemingly chaotic world. Drawn inward by moments of humor that counterposed the strange events, if they can be called that, I was drawn forward by the narrator even as the narrative itself seemed to be collapsing. These are three novels with so much wonder and ideas to think about that the attentive reader cannot fail to be impressed. I found these novels to be moving in a unique way and important additions to the literature of modernism.

In Samuel Beckett's novel, Molloy, the first sentence states bluntly, “I am in my mother's room.” This is followed on the first page of the novel with the phrase “I don't know” repeated five times, and if you add “I don't understand” and “I've forgotten” you have eight assertions of lack of knowing. How can or should the reader interpret those comments as establishing anything but a high level of uncertainty both about what the narrator (I) is telling us and what the narrator, may or may not, believe about himself and the world around him? Of most interest to this reader is the comment that the narrator would like to “finish dying” and that his mother is dead, although he is not sure exactly when she died.

What is the reader's expectation for the succeeding 167 pages of the novel based on the first page filled with uncertainty and death? There is work mentioned, but the pages he works on are filled with “signs I don't understand”. Can we say the same for ourselves as readers? At best we are left with snippets of possible information about a handful of others (the man who comes every week, they who may or may not have buried his mother, the son that he may or may not have, and the chambermaid without true love, and yet another who was the true love-whose name he has forgotten, repeatedly). As I reread these lines I cannot help but note the humor of the situation.

Dark Ideas in Another Place

This Other Eden: 

a Novel 

by Paul Harding

“Other ideas still, though, were darker, underwater, or he underwater and they above the surface, clear and sharp and focused. He could hear them in his head, feel their weight in his chest and their shapes in his throat, but he was slow of tongue and they went unworded. He knew everyone had the same kind of ideas, but that his thoughts outdistanced his words sooner than with other people—even the words for what he meant when he thought about this hovered above the water—dark, familiar circling birds he could not name.”   ― Paul Harding, This Other Eden



This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island as an imagined, somewhat simplistic, utopia and is skillfully written in a mellifluous and poetic style, giving it a complete personality of its own. While based on a real place and events, I do not consider it an historical novel but rather more speculative in nature. 

The book requires concentration and focus despite being brief (just over 200 pages), yet it covers multiple characters and time periods. There are references to eugenics that was a popular movement during the beginning of the twentieth century which were definitely upsetting, yet they were necessary to the story and to present the real temper of the times. The effect on the primary characters in these passages was devastating, but the narrative voice handled the main characters with kindness and respect. I was drawn into its setting and era and discovered that I was moved by an emotional connection to the people living on Apple Island. 

While I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to discerning readers, especially those interested in the social history of the period, mainly because it has such a deep concept, exquisite details, and lovely prose to appreciate. 

Plants and People

Lab Girl 

by Hope Jahren

"People are like plants: they grow toward the light. I chose science because science gave me what I needed---a home as defined in the most literal sense: a safe place to be." - Hope Jahren

Are people like plants? Can you hear plants grow? These and other questions are raised and answered or at least discussed in this fascinating book by geobiologist Hope Jahren. I have enjoyed reading about science throughout my life, from biographies of Michael Faraday and George Washington Carver in my youth to works by scientists and histories of science in my adult life. 

Lab Girl changed the way I perceived trees. It forced me to consider the incredible grace and tenacity of a seed. Most notably, it introduced me to a very fascinating woman, a scientist who was so enthralled with her work that I could practically feel it in every page. This is a clever, captivating, and successful debut. With her passion for science, Hope Jahren's Lab Girl teaches us in the best way possible. Its profundity made it a book that is powerful and unique. The result was as interesting a read as any I have had in quite a while.

Beasts on an Island

The Island of Dr. Moreau 

by H.G. Wells

“By this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything”   ― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau





Over the period of a decade beginning with The Time Machine in 1895, H. G. Wells wrote some of his most popular fictions in the form of scientific romance novels, what I refer to as speculative fiction. These books have captured the imagination of readers ever since and are arguably as popular today as they were more than one hundred years ago. Among these perhaps the strangest and best is The Island of Dr. Moreau. Undoubtedly influenced by Robinson Crusoe, but also by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island which was published only thirteen years earlier, this book goes far beyond those deserted island tales and looks forward to the twenty-first century and beyond. In its day it was considered blasphemous, but in the age of cloning its depiction of vivisection takes on new meaning while the blasphemy recedes into the background.

The story is an insightful allegory of civilization as only the tip of the evolutionary tree and humans the only highly evolved animals. By using his cold-blooded scalpel, Moreau is, in a way, quickening the pace of evolution and giving his creatures two features that are exclusive to humans: primitive speech and a terror and wonder combination that is essential to religious belief. Their lowest impulses take over after the death of their god, Moreau, as exemplified by Montgomery's reckless actions, which spearhead the subsequent frenzy of self-indulgence. Observing the beast's plunge into self-destruction, the narrator Prendick is left alone when Moreau and Montgomery are slain.

After the terror passes, Prendick acknowledges that he might have acquired part of the "natural wildness" of the animals he had coexisted with. He senses the "animal [that] was surging up through them" and travels among humans in terror for a long time afterward, even though he knows this is unreasonable because he lives among "perfectly reasonable creatures" who are not bound by their instincts. The Island of Dr. Moreau is another warning about human reasoning put to the wrong use, and it offers more evidence of Wells’s inner debate on the issue. Above all this is a good story with suspense that holds even after the first breathless reading that it usually inspires.

Darkness and Ghosts

All Down Darkness Wide 

by Seán Hewitt

“There was desperation in his eyes. As he looked at me, it was as though he were looking into me from another world, trying to reach across some void, but everything he said was somehow falling short, not quite carrying its meaning across.”   ― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide




This memoir is shaped by the story of a poet who writes of his friendship with a man whose unhappiness was causing him great suffering. In it, the author felt he had to prove "that I was good, that I was kind, that I followed the rules" while growing up in England in the 1990s and 2000s, despite the fact that he "was brought up vaguely Catholic" and "had a secret to keep." 

The mystery was that he came out as gay during a period when the Catholic Church was fighting a bill in Parliament that would have legalized equal marriage. That is only one of the numerous difficulties Hewitt writes about in this memorable memoir. Hewitt was reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poem "The Lantern Out of Doors" serves as the title of this book, after his partner passed away while he was a student at the University of Cambridge. The memory of or experience of Hopkin's poetry permeates the narrative in a way that I have seldom encountered. That is a good thing.

I found this memoir to be a heartbreaking discourse on "ghosts" like Hopkins and the inability to achieve permanence. It is filled with beautiful scene after beautiful scene, from Hewitt's own father, who confided on his deathbed, "All I want is my boys," to a patient at the mental hospital who laments that his son never visits and remarks, "I knew you'd come." As long as I can continue to spend time with my boys and enjoy listening to the birds while I sit in the garden. I only want that. It is a deeply poignant reflection on mental illness, queer identity, and the transience of existence.