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Broken Hearts and Blood Feuds |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Bob Gingher |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/1998 |
| Size: 2,166 Words, 12,294 Characters |
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THE MERCY SEAT
Rilla Askew
New York: Viking, 1997
427 pp., $23.95
There is an overriding cosmic certainty in Rilla Askew's fiction that through struggle, humankind embodies truths that will be told and retold, world without end. The preface to this Tolstoy-sized tome, a novel of four "books," is from the Psalms: "Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told." The passage from Isaiah, announcing book 1 of this big novel, suggests just how sacred the sense of story is to The Mercy Seat.
Here, from the onset, is the framing of The Mercy Seat: "There are voices in the earth here, telling truth in old stories. Go down in the hidden places by the waters, listen; you will hear them buried in the sand and clay." This novel is a quest for roots that hold, the heart's high cry for a heavenly home on earth.
"Walk west in the tall grass prairie; you'll hear whispering in the bluestem. Stand here, on the ragged rim of a mountain in the southeastern corner; you can hear the sound rising on the south wind, sifting in the dust through the crowns of the cedars: storie...
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... a larger tale, then any writer's task is to communicate that story from as far outside ourselves, our worlds-between-the-eyes, as is possible. The real mystery of our human position relative to this world (the title of this magazine) is only "knowable" via hints and guesses, the total order of words, and the medium of the story. And the most universal, timeless story is the quest for home. vbcrlf
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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