I knew I was going to love this like I knew I would not like Klara

Thoughts by Marilynne Robinson, Picador 2020, 310 pages

Challenge: personal

Genre/Theme: Faith Family Redemption Despair

Type/Source: eBook / Libby-Kindle

What It’s About: Forbidden love. Why, oh why, do we do things we know we shouldn’t? Uncountenanced.

Yes, I had to look up that word. A word that is defined by its opposite. INFURIATING.

Uncountenanced means not countenanced.

Yea, OK.

ah! but the SYNONYMS tell you: “forbidden, unaccredited, black-market, censor, banish, out, tabu, ostracise, forbidding, banning, smuggled,…”

Thoughts: Jack, a bum, a lowlife, a shiftless fraud, a ne’er-do-well, aimless, lost soul… meets Della, a fine upstanding young Black teacher. They fall in love, despite good intentions? despite seeing all the roadblocks and glaring reasons how it will be a difficult relationship, this being set in the 1950’s where just being seen together could get them arrested. Jack is just so fascinating! He is talented and smart, but just cannot feign interest or trust in ambition, to live on any set path of ‘the straight & narrow’. Oh Della.

Had my heart an unbroken string, your touch would set it trembling.

Rating: Five slices of pie. These books are my favorite FAVORITES.

… she put her hand in the crook of his arm. “I kept a drumstick for you, Mr. Boughton, and some stuffing, and a piece of pie.

For other EXCELLENT reviews, visit Ripple Effects by Arti and also Teresa at Shelf Love.

He was undisgraced and she was unoffended, a devout hope more or less fulfilled.

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