Sadomasochism and religion explored together
While there are no rope or belt scenarios à la Fifty Shades in Fire Sermon, Jamie Quatro’s novel fairly pulsates with sadomasochism. The major departure is that, in Quatro’s debut, punishment is selfadministered and self-consciously linked to an eminent line of Christian thinkers. Apparently, the Georgia-based author wants high-minded readers to think of Thomas Aquinas (“We can open our hearts to God, but only with Divine help”) and Simone Weil (“All sins are attempts to fill voids”) rather than Anastasia Steele (“I don’t remember reading about nipple clamps in the Bible”).
The story’s primary sufferer is Maggie, the well-off author of a book of short fiction as well as an unfulfilled housewife, PhD program dropout and theologically-oriented poet manquée.
Married for nearly two decades to her college sweetheart, Thomas, a generous, thoughtful and supportive but agnostic man who does not satisfy her sexually (and possesses a dominant, sadistic streak), Maggie ponders sex, faith, longing, fidelity, marriage, happiness, loyalty, prayer and the rest through a Christian lens. She wonders whether, for example, sex is a boomerang: “sex a lure to God, God a lure back to sex, ad infinitum.”
Across several dozen chapters — depicted as chronologically shuffled emails, therapy session excerpts, letters, poems, conversation transcripts, and first- and third-person prose — Quatro fleshes out Maggie’s dilemma. Disgruntled and yearning, she reads a book in search of enlightenment. And before she can say “hyper-regular iambic meter,” she’s written to an acclaimed poet, a prospective mentor. The letter-writing intensifies (intellectual and loin-cooling: “I read a great deal of Western apophatic theology in grad school,” she writes; “It is indeed humanity’s Great Failure, that we go on trying to exist apart from God,” James the poet emails). There are coffee dates and, semi-finally, one earth-shattering hotel liaison.
After that, for years: much guilt, many avowals, much repentance and self-flagellation, and many, many questions related to being a sentient person with a sexual appetite in a universe created by God.
The mechanics of Quatro’s novel are an enjoyable puzzle, but clueless Thomas and pompous James are paper thin. And, as presented, Maggie’s sophistry about infidelity on top of agonized hand-wringing and, ultimately, the failure to find the courage for her convictions make her a trying companion for two hundred pages. Brett Josef Grubisic divides his weeks between Salt Spring Island and Vancouver. His fourth novel, Oldness; or, the Last-Ditch Efforts of Marcus O, comes out in October.