Review: 'Fire Sermon' by Jamie Quatro

I requested Fire Sermon in 2018 because I was utterly intrigued by the blurb. It turns out I didn't have the life experience or maturity required to fully engage with it until now. For that, I apologise. But now, when I'm nearing thirty, Fire Sermon resonates with me in a way that it never would have five years ago. Fire Sermon is a searing read, one which questions love, faith, identity and more while telling a relatively simple tale. Thanks to Picador and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay!

Pub. Date: 2/22/2018
Publisher: Pan Macmillan; Picador

Maggie is entirely devoted to her husband Thomas, their two beautiful children, and to God. But then what begins as innocent letter writing with poet James starts to become something far more erotically charged, their meeting of minds threatening to become a meeting of bodies. As everything Maggie believes in is thrown into doubt the reader is drawn ever deeper into the battleground of her soul. Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro is a daring debut novel of obsession, desire and salvation that shows the radical light and dark of love itself. 

This is a visceral, rich and devastating portrait of loves lived and lost that cannot fail to echo in your own experience.

I would call myself a Christian, and yet I've been told frequently that I don't really fit the criteria. This usually comes up when I tell people that I don't necessarily think it's all true, from Creation to Resurrection, but that I do like to believe in it. Faith is not the same as fact, for me. It doesn't have to be true to give me comfort or to challenge me. My faith does not stand in opposition to my trust in science, for example. People find it difficult to understand this when I first say it, but usually go along with it once I've kinda explained. I also don't go to church, unless I happen to be in my hometown. I only go to church then because I grew up in that building and its quiet, sober space is like a second home. My faith is like that building. Grand and dramatic at times, but also quiet and unadorned. It is something I question and something that challenges my world-view. I give all this background information because I think my engagement with my faith is why Fire Sermon resonated on a certain level with me. Maggie's faith is something she grew up with and couldn't get rid off, even if she tried. It is also something that moved and shifted with her as she grew. Throwing off the constraints of organised religion and exploring other avenues towards faith allows Maggie to expand her understanding. And yet it also continues to confuse her. There are no easy answers when it comes to faith, or life, or self. Faith is only one lense through which to approach the world and the way Quatro uses faith, both Christian and Eastern movements, was illuminating. In the exchanges between Maggie and James there is so much interesting theology happening that I know I'll have to reread Fire Sermon in the future.

Fire Sermon is far from a straightforward story, both in the sense that there is a lot going on and in that it is not told chronologically. Maggie is looking back on her affair with James, a poet whose work has breathed new life into her. Raised religiously, her faith has always been a big cornerstone of Maggie's life and yet it is also something she has come to question, reshape, and battle with. What is God? What is faith?  Is it an excuse? Is it a reason? Is it calm or is it chaos? As Maggie moves through her life, from her early marriage to motherhood, from a discontinued PhD to her first poems, her views shift and only become more complicated as they become entangled with her ideas of herself as a woman. The crux of the book, I think, rests on this division between soul and body which is so entrenched in Christianity. If our body is aflame with sensation, is that temptation or is that purification? Should we resist every bodily impulse or are those very impulses ways for us to get to know ourselves better? While all of this makes it sound like Fire Sermon is a very intellectual and spiritual novel, which it is, it is also incredibly physical and grounded. This sometimes threw me for a loop a little and it doesn't always resonate equally successfully, but Fire Sermon remains a fascinating insight into a woman's mind.

What astounded me about Fire Sermon was the raw emotion which came through on every page. Maggie is utterly aflame in feeling and thought and I couldn't help but be reminded of that famous sculpture, 'The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa'. The angel's arrow, pointed at her heart; the gilded stucco resembling divine light or flames; and her facial expression, somewhere between suffering and glory. This is what Fire Sermon reminded me of and the fact that this novel was Jamie Quatro's debut is mind-blowing. While the structure of the novel, with its hopping back and forth in time and its use of different writing forms, is at times a little confusing, the strong emotion keeps the reader utterly gripped. The way Quatro also interrogates Maggie's womanhood, to what extend she uses her role as mother and wife, coated in religious guilt, as shields to hide behind, as ways to ensure her surroundings fit what she wants, was incredibly sharp. It won't necessarily work for every reader, but it made me reconsider my own stances as well. Its fragmented writing means you have to dedicate yourself to it, but once you find the novel's rhythm, Fire Sermon will consume you.

I give this novel..

4 Universes!

Fire Sermon really had a grip on my mind for these past few days. The way Quatro manages to strike a balance between theological debates and sensual emotion is astounding and I've already got my eye out for more books by her.