The last three books that have had me lost in my Nook are by Elizabeth Strout. I hadn’t heard about her before, but I read she won the Pulitzer in 2009 with her novel Olive Kitteridge. So I started with that one. She has two others, Amy and Isabelle and Abide With Me that I read immediately after.
Elizabeth is from new England, Maine to be precise. The term “New England” is one that awakens magical images in my mind, mostly of Mother Nature. I love the idea of the fall aflame in color, and the idea of long snowfalls and prolonged quiet, lonely walks bundled in winter wear. I know, most people that actually know the area say that winters can be miserable, but somehow I cannot associate the words New England with misery. Go figure.
Anyway, I read Strout’s three novels and I was captivated. She is a woman who takes her time with her characters and their lives. I read somewhere that she is a realist and I agree. She makes them real in their interactions and in the things that happen to them. Still more, what I find oddly perturbing but captivating at the same time
(because I can be a nosy body), is how intimately she portrays them. To be truthful, I sometimes felt that she had me in a room way too close to a character and that I was learning things that were too intimate and too private and that I didn’t have a right to be like the proverbial fly on the wall. When she deals with all the sordid details of excess or perversion, it’s with respect and objectivity, like she is saying, “Hey, I know, this is horrible, but it is part of our humanity and it explains this character better, so let’s deal with it and move on. No need for your judgment.”
Last week I went to the movies. I saw Higher Ground exquisitely acted and directed by Vera Farmiga (remember her from Up in the Air, as Clooney’s lover). The movie is a subdued but intense drama of one woman’s journey through her spiritual and religious life. Corinne is the main character who in her teen years becomes a radical and fundamental Christian along with her husband. She gives her youth and a good chunk of her adult years to her religious beliefs.
At some point, Corinne begins to struggle with her faith and you can see how she starts to feel unsettled by what she has held to be true in life: God and Christ. Her beliefs begin to crumble, as well as her marriage of many years, one that gave her three children.
The movie is based on the memoir This Dark World by Carolyn S. Briggs that now has been renamed Higher Ground: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost. So moved was I by the movie that I read this book in three days.
When I saw Corinne battling to hold on to her faith, I cried, I so identified myself with that odd feeling of emptiness and of uselessness when you feel you must release something that has anchored you to the world since you are aware of your existence. It took me to those first months when I began to define myself as an atheist.
After the movie and after reading the book I wrote in my journal: Dear Father, I am done doubting and questioning You. You are. Period. And I love You. No more atheism for me, even if I’m wrong, You are and I love You. Your daughter, Tita.
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