Fiction. 320 pgs. W. W. Norton. 2019. ISBN: 978-0-393357-30-1.
If you have read any short pieces of Blair Hurley’s—perhaps her 2018 Pushcart Prize Winning “The Home for Buddhist Widows”—you have enjoyed a nice slice of cake. If you’d like to enjoy the whole cake, I urge you to read Hurley’s debut novel, The Devoted. Protagonist Nicole’s spiritual and emotional rebirthing is so applicable to real life, I too found a new version of myself upon closing the last pages. Nicole’s turbulent relationship with her mother and brother made me want to return home to bicker with and hug my family.
Hurley commands attention with intimate treatment on imagery and detail matched with unapologetic honesty on human emotion and motivation. Whether you are or once were Catholic, Buddhist, or not, this novel will gift you new ways and reasons to explore and scrutinize religion. Regardless of your religious background, her accurate depictions of and characters’ experiences with religion will ensure relatability. You may not have been forced into Easter tights that cut into the middle of your stomach as well as the white sweater scratching at your exposed neck, but you have been forced to wear this and go to that. I guarantee as you read Nicole’s visceral flashbacks during Easter mass you will have your own.
I owe Hurley more than purchasing this book, for it did not stop teaching me. Whether it was on Catholic heritage, Buddhist tradition, challenged cliché life lessons, or new approaches to life, each propelled the reader forward. I was always greedy for more while ironically in conflict with Buddhism’s rejection of worldly wants. Hurley can tell you better than I, “Pleasure makes us hungry for more…We think we are entitled to pleasure and happiness, when the universe has made no such promises” (143). It is no hyperbole that I assert this book has given me a new outlook on life, and I believe it can for you too.
The Devoted is available through W. W. Norton. Purchase it now through Bookshop.org.
ERICKA RUSSELL has recently moved from Ohio to Bowling Green, Kentucky to complete Western Kentucky University’s MFA Program. She is concentrating in fiction alongside composition and rhetoric.
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