I would probably never have read this book if it wasn't for her. In any case, my reading of the book (if I am wrong with that statement) would have differed if I had found it on my own.
There's a cool thing about reading a book you know someone else read, at least for me. I keep that person in mind. I wonder if they smirked at the same simile, if they cried at the same line, I wonder if they felt the same frustrating anxiety... and it is beautiful in its uniqueness but also quite annoying.
It's like when you have a really good story you need to tell your best friend. And you imagine what she'll say. But you can't call her just now. Because you have to keep reading.
Anyway, that is how I can best encapsulate how I felt throughout the book about that. Now on to the book
I was excited to read this book. I've never read a non-specifically-religious book about a Catholic priest. Especially not one that is not outwardly pro or against Catholicism. And I really enjoyed the beginning. I (just like Russell so obviously intended) quickly fell in love with the characters. She has an unrealistic skill of capturing humans in their entirety. Raw, honest, multifaceted, endearing in their flaws.
The main character, Emilio, really hit home. I pictured him as a Sodalite from back in my adolescence, effervescent, joyous, playful. Additionally, he's a linguist. He's intrigued with language and has a knack for it. Mary D Russell also has an enviable knowledge of language (and astronomy and space stuff but that kind of bored me). She creates her own languages with simple rules that follow linguistic laws! For a long time (The first 200 pages are very introductory) I thought maybe Marimar sent it to me because I share this interest in language.
But the book turns a very dark corner. It digs deep into questions of faith, logic, morality, friendship, love... it digs too deep in the last 100 pages.
It made me anxious. It made me angry, worried, upset. It shook me so much that just now when I told Joe I was going to write the post on it he looked worried, "is it going to make you sad again?"
Fortunately, it is not. Thinking back on it is easier than reading the last chapter of that book. I don't want to completely give it away just in case someone else wants to read it. Read at your own risk below?
Spoilers below:
I felt cheated. This book is too powerful in that way. Russell turned me into Emilio. I felt his anger, his sense of utter betrayal.
The whole book leads you to believe Emilio will find beauty and love because he knows he is following God's beauty and love. But he is not. He is, quite crudely, sodomized, and turned into an angry murderer. He loses all his friends, all his work... all the Earthly beauty he walked towards.
It tests your faith, to say, no I do believe in God. Knowing full well that this could happen (maybe not in a different planet) and that still God asks for your love, faith, commitment.
In a way, she offers you a different kind of beauty at the end. Emilio is not the same crippled, black-shadowed, man you meet at first in the very last pages. I am so thankful for that.
It was interesting too, I read her q+a at the end of the book. She wrote this as she was converting to Judaism. A religion that kept all faith after the Holocaust. Knowing that last bit kind of helped me sleep at night. It is so much grander than me. Just as God and my faith should be.
Reading this book clashed with two other events in my life. One was staring into the eyes of a San Miguel Kid at 10pm. It crushed me like a Jana'ata. This poor child in his mothers arm, next to another younger baby, hungry, tired, worried.
Joe and I were walking around the streets, love-drunk on a very nice date in the restaurant we had our rehearsal dinner 2 years ago. We'd just splurged more than usual, enjoyed a very delicious meal with two drinks... I bought myself a cute pair of earrings, and I was thanking God for all that I have. And just then we see these families with young children, ripped clothes, begging for pesos.
How do you consolidate that? How do you believe in a God that gives me a Pina Colada and a sweet little buzz, and gives a child nothing but the need to beg?
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I was also watching The Good Place (also at Marimar's recommendation I think?). It plays with Good and Evil, "heaven and hell."
Oh Mateo's bathtime, must go, and stop thinking about all this.
Would I recommend this book? I don't know quite yet.
Did I like it? No
Did I enjoy it? In a twisted way
Am I glad I read it? yes.
I have to admit too that I felt like it was such a work of magnificent authorship that this part also angered me. I have entered a stage where I become more and more upset that I have not written my own masterpiece every time I read something amazing.
Page count: 408
Total: 3827
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