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by Jamie Quatro
This "startlingly original" novel from the author of I Want to Show You More offers "a profound, and profoundly strange, meditation on desire" (Claire Dederer, The Atlantic).
Jamie Quatro's remarkable debut story collection, I Want to Show You More, announced her as "a writer of great originality" (New York Times Book Review). Now, with her first novel, Quatro delivers a portrait of female desire and the complexities of a marriage.
Married twenty years to Thomas and living in Nashville with their two children, Maggie is drawn ineluctably into a passionate affair while still fiercely committed to her husband and family. What begins as a platonic exchange between writer Maggie and poet James, gradually transforms into an emotional and erotically-charged bond that challenges Maggie's sense of loyalty and morality, drawing her into the depths of desire.
Using an array of narrative techniques and written in spare, elegant prose, Jamie Quatro gives us a compelling account of one woman's emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual yearnings—unveiling the impulses and contradictions that reside in us all. Fire Sermon, "full of vivid, mercurial prose, breathes new life into [its] subject and sets it gloriously ablaze" (Claire Luchette, O Magazine).
"A stunning first novel about faith and yearning in the crucible of a strained marriage and a brief affair...The lyric cadence of Quatro's writing gets into one's veins as she stealthily transforms the most common of plotlines into a scorching analysis of the 'agony of temptation,' prayer, the relationship between Eros and the divine, and a 'renewed sense of holiness.' Maggie longs for a 'return to a viable literature of faith.' Quatro infuses that tradition with fresh, molten energy." —Booklist
"Affecting and memorable... Quatro's novel will appeal particularly to readers interested in a dissection of how one reconciles belief with desire" —Publishers Weekly
"A lean first novel steeped in theology, suburban domesticity, literary criticism, child-rearing and, most dramatically, infidelity, Fire Sermon sizzles and cools to the rhythm of its narrator Maggie's moods and meanderings.... Besides old-school letters and e-mails, [the] novel is built on Maggie's journal entries, dialogues with her counselor, poetry, conversations with her daughter's therapist and prayers. The result is a psychological MRI of a complicated woman seeking to know herself inside and out... a contemporary take on an age-old story." —Shelf Awareness
"What an absolutely beautiful and moving book. I started reading Fire Sermon and literally, was cranky when I couldn't get back to it. The writing is nothing less than masterful. I've always been a HUGE fan of Jamie Quatro but now she's taking my fandom to another level." —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming and Another Brooklyn
"I devoured this novel! Quatro is a fearless marvel. An exquisite story of female desire, faith, and commitment and one of the most haunting portraits of a marriage I've ever read." —Lily King, author of Euphoria
This information about Fire Sermon was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jamie Quatro is the author of I Want To Show You More. She is a visiting professor in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program, a contributing editor at Oxford American, and lives with her husband and children in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.
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