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Gentle, stoical, visceral pain leaches from every page, into my fingers, till my very blood is charged with it.
The agony of wounds and guilt, yes, but the balm of forgiveness, too, I hope.

��I did not think that the cursed shadow of what had happened would ever lift�� It pumped darkness�� It was a heaviness in me that often became a weight which I could not carry.��


Image: Statue of weeping woman in a cemetery ()

Who is this for?

I expect this novel provokes the strongest reactions in those who can tick at least one of the following:
�� A parent, especially a mother.
�� Raised with New Testament stories.
�� Lost a loved-one prematurely, especially a child.
�� Burdened with guilt and "what if?" about a situation that ended, or looks as if it will end, badly.

The devout may find it too heretical.
Militant atheists and followers of other faiths may find this too steeped in the New Testament.
I read it as neither.
I read it as a mother, sharing the agonies of another mother: grief, pain, and guilt to a degree I hope I will never have to face.

Mary looks back

Mary, mother of Jesus, is looking back at the life and death of her beloved son.
She remembers how her beautiful, thoughtful child was transformed and lost to her, lost to life.
The first, innocuous loss, was at the temple, when he was twelve, staying behind in his “Father’s house��.
In later years, she lost him to delusions and dodgy friends that turned him into a dangerous demagogue.
Ultimately she lost him to a gruesome and humiliating death that left her vulnerable to shadowy principalities and powers.

She examines his faults, questions his miracles, and agonises over what she could have done differently: how she might have saved the life of the one she gave life to, how she might have saved the Saviour of mankind.
Her greatest pain is that there was nothing.
Nothing she could have done to save him.
And now all she has are memories.
Memories which hurt as much as they heal.
Memories which are milked and curdled by protective predators with a new religion to start.
She looks back for solace, to the virginal ancient goddess Artemis, even as she looks ahead, in answer to the whispered call of death.


What use a mother who cannot help her child at their time of greatest need?

I weep for the times when I have failed my own child, and humbly seek forgiveness - not from God, but from the flesh of my flesh, my beloved, precious child.

I first read and reviewed this book in 2016, when I was worried about my 22-year old child. It hit hard. I updated it on 1 January 2019, when I was able to relax a great deal about that. My child was happy, healthy, and beginning to thrive again: working productively and enjoyably, and planning the future.

But that joy and relief coincided with the shock and grief of my father unexpectedly ending his life. And then a loved one said how cathartic they'd found this book when they were in a deep depression a few years ago. So I turned to this review, and read it with generations reversed:

What use a child who cannot help their parent at their time of greatest need?

So I wept for the times when I failed my own father, and would humbly seek his forgiveness, were it not too late.

A few years on, I merely weep for all my many failings.

Quotes

�� “It would not be long before all the life in me, the little left, would go, as a flame goes out on a mild day, easily, needing only the smallest hint of wind, a sudden flicker and then out, gone, as though it had never been alight.��

�� “Their brother grew easily towards death in the same way as a source for a river, hidden under the earth, begins flowing and carries water across a plain to the sea. They would have done anything to divert the stream, make it meander on the plain and dry up under the weight of the sun�� his last breath, when he was fully part of the waves of the sea, an invisible aspect of their rhythm.��

�� “Moving as though his spirit was still full with the thunderous novelty of its own great death, like a pitcher of sweet water, filled to the brim, heavy with itself.��

�� “The wildness that was in the very air�� this great disturbance in the world made its way like creeping mist or dampness into the two or three rooms I inhabit.��

�� “What was to occur weighed on me. At times, however, I forgot about it, I let my mind linger over anything at all only to find that what I was moving towards was waiting to spring as a frightened animal will spring�� And then it came more slowly, more insidiously. It entered my consciousness, it edged its way into me as something poisonous will crawl along the ground.��

�� “Now that the days are shorter and the nights are cold�� There is a richness in the light. It is as if, in becoming scarce�� it lets loose something more intense, something that is filled with a shivering clarity. And then, when it begins to fade, it seems to leave raked shadows on everything. And during that hour, the hour of ambiguous light, I feel safe to slip out and breathe the dense air when colours are fading and the sky seems to be pulling them in, calling them home.��

See also

�� The painful memories this novella stirred in me were stirred again by Claire Oshetsky's brilliant, raw, and disturbing novel, Chouette, which I reviewed HERE.

�� Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child was partial inspiration for Chouette, and overlaps with Tóibín's themes. See my review HERE.

�� I was surprised to be reminded of this novella by a story in Daisy Johnson's Fen, which is a collection of mythic, mystical short stories, focused on young women, and set in the Fens of contemporary England. See my review HERE.

�� Vladimir Nabokov's short story, Symbols and Signs, features parents struggling to cope with an adult child's mental health issues. See my review HERE.