Silence

What a remarkable piece of religious fiction. There are no easy answers, no tricks. Just raw honesty about faith, doubt, suffering, and trial. It shows what a substantive faith looks like in the face of life's brutality, and how one's faith can be fragile even while it's object is unwavering, solid, strong, and silent. A book I'll return to in the future, for sure.

If you know of Martin Scorcese's film, but haven't seen it yet, let me encourage you to read this before seeing the film. I saw the film first, and I feel some of this story's most poignant, powerful, and moving moments lost some of their punch because I saw them coming. Also, the movie flattened and changed the dynamic between two of the main characters in a way that made the book's more complicated, nuanced depiction distracting. I think it's probably easier to mentally move from nuanced portrayal to flattened than the other way around.

Regardless, this book is soul-shaking in moments and gives voice to some of the deepest questions and whispers of our hearts, which we often can't articulate or feel shame in doing so. And yet, bringing them to light is the only way to assess them and offer them to the God who listens and moves, even when he does not speak.