I'm only slightly embarrassed at recent my string of novels i'm rating 5 unabashed stars, and here is another, and I'm rating these novels so highly because it seems to me that they are filled with love, every one of them. And love is what I need to read right now.

So here is Lord, the latest novel I've read; a novel that defies every possibility of a literal interpretation, and whose sentences spring off the page and fly away from any representational reality. And yet. How fundamentally human these happenings seem to me, however surreal. Each sentence leads me forward to a bright new possibility of human vulnerability, and to a bright new possibility of human connection. Each scene as it comes along (and the scenes come along, over and over and over again, intertwining and pouring forth, from one sentence to the next) is filled with the possibility that life, however fragile, and however filled with obstacles, and fear, and pain, is without question worth living. It seems that this novel is about how our gift of life is worth trying to live in the fullest way we can muster, even in those times when we feel most alone and without purpose. I don't know for sure it that is what this book means. But I do know it held me captive with each sentence, and brought me with each sentence closer to the edge of something unexpectedly human and alive. ( )