This is mine. It was posted just this morning on Amazon.... What's yours?
***
HAPPINESS CAN ALWAYS BE REBORN
What is the most important thing? What is your favourite thing? And what if that thing was suddenly ripped away from you? I know this feeling. Do you? I knew it at the dawn of my adulthood and the consequent melancholy, bitterness, hopelessness, yet hope. And again, I knew it this whole year; the threat of it. And this very week, the week after reading Genesis of Idolatry, this feeling is ever so relevant. And in this context, one thing I have taken with me from Genesis, is the tender, warming image of a once reluctant father carving the coolest toys for his beloved boy.
Such a simple yet carefully selected literary gesture has given me strength. It reminded me of a day, many years ago, when I lost my most important and favourite thing; of how I suffered so, and how, years later, I rediscovered happiness, and a new favourite, important thing; and how today, because with that newfound thing there comes the fear of loss and the memory of suffering, I have to know happiness can always be reborn. Genesis helped with that by reinforcing that universal.
I warn readers not to read Genesis if they already know they will not read the books promised to come. The reason is that Quent Cordair superbly succeeds in making one want and need to read the other books. One is left unsatisfied and eager to know what happens next. There is a strange, surprising finale that suggests a greater intriguing complexity awaits. Genesis is a swift, simple read. The narrative is stimulating, uplifting, touching, sweet, endearing. I was left certain of what the story of Myron would make me feel overall. But Quent is also going to do something unexpected and special, and it is going to thrill me and blow me away. I know this because he told such a compelling story with such few, simple elements with Genesis. It is a beautiful simplicity.
I believe this quote spoken by a great sculptor in the story expresses perfectly the feeling one is left with upon finishing Genesis:
"But this figure seems more of a sketch to me, an idea. I don't think that its essence had been fully worked out. There is something of an incompleteness about it, as though, if the figure were alive, it might have been mere moments away from declaring its theme, its identity -- but as presented here, it seems yet on the verge, not quite ready. I can sculpt neither uncertainty nor uncertainly. I must know what it is that I am creating."
Of course there is much more to come. And if this was intentional on the part of Quent--that the structure and effect of Book One is similar to a certain modello introduced to us in the story--then I am impressed by how clever and sensitive that narrative gesture is.
In a world where representatives of scientific reasoning and classical beauty in art are persecuted by the rising tyranny and intolerance of Christianity, we have the following medley of companions:
* A great philosopher, who is also a woman in a time where men dominated, is a teacher to the greatest minds of her city, who usually tend to be older than her. She is supremely dedicated to science and suppresses the concomitant need for love and desire.
* An abandoned orphan boy, highly beautiful in a time of beauty's escalating disvalue, meets a bitter yet passionate man of the mind, an exile and outcast. A relationship develops reminiscent of that between Gwynplaine and Ursus in Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs. It is beautiful, warm, and humorous.
* There is a young woman in full blossom who possesses a spirit higher than her station in life. She longs for the opportunity to fulfill the best within her and yet remains admirably serene. At the dawn of Christianity's dominance, she is the embodiment of the savvy businessman, shamelessly motivated by the profit motive. Will love be her deliverance?
* There is the religious zealot who resents, envies, hates, all that is good on this earth and life.
* There is the fickle rabble.
* There is the spirit of Plato now dominating over the spirit of Aristotle.
A dark world is looming and a brave, noble, youth--a genius--will fight to keep the torch of enlightenment burning amidst an atmosphere that promises to be increasingly suffocating.
Finally, what the entirety of Idolatry promises is the vision of an "Unknown God", the essence of what the greatest civilization of all time was eagerly seeking, touching it at times, but never with a full, firm grasp. And we begin to see it in Genesis, this new God. Yet, in Genesis, all the characters are human.
***
HAPPINESS CAN ALWAYS BE REBORN
What is the most important thing? What is your favourite thing? And what if that thing was suddenly ripped away from you? I know this feeling. Do you? I knew it at the dawn of my adulthood and the consequent melancholy, bitterness, hopelessness, yet hope. And again, I knew it this whole year; the threat of it. And this very week, the week after reading Genesis of Idolatry, this feeling is ever so relevant. And in this context, one thing I have taken with me from Genesis, is the tender, warming image of a once reluctant father carving the coolest toys for his beloved boy.
Such a simple yet carefully selected literary gesture has given me strength. It reminded me of a day, many years ago, when I lost my most important and favourite thing; of how I suffered so, and how, years later, I rediscovered happiness, and a new favourite, important thing; and how today, because with that newfound thing there comes the fear of loss and the memory of suffering, I have to know happiness can always be reborn. Genesis helped with that by reinforcing that universal.
I warn readers not to read Genesis if they already know they will not read the books promised to come. The reason is that Quent Cordair superbly succeeds in making one want and need to read the other books. One is left unsatisfied and eager to know what happens next. There is a strange, surprising finale that suggests a greater intriguing complexity awaits. Genesis is a swift, simple read. The narrative is stimulating, uplifting, touching, sweet, endearing. I was left certain of what the story of Myron would make me feel overall. But Quent is also going to do something unexpected and special, and it is going to thrill me and blow me away. I know this because he told such a compelling story with such few, simple elements with Genesis. It is a beautiful simplicity.
I believe this quote spoken by a great sculptor in the story expresses perfectly the feeling one is left with upon finishing Genesis:
"But this figure seems more of a sketch to me, an idea. I don't think that its essence had been fully worked out. There is something of an incompleteness about it, as though, if the figure were alive, it might have been mere moments away from declaring its theme, its identity -- but as presented here, it seems yet on the verge, not quite ready. I can sculpt neither uncertainty nor uncertainly. I must know what it is that I am creating."
Of course there is much more to come. And if this was intentional on the part of Quent--that the structure and effect of Book One is similar to a certain modello introduced to us in the story--then I am impressed by how clever and sensitive that narrative gesture is.
In a world where representatives of scientific reasoning and classical beauty in art are persecuted by the rising tyranny and intolerance of Christianity, we have the following medley of companions:
* A great philosopher, who is also a woman in a time where men dominated, is a teacher to the greatest minds of her city, who usually tend to be older than her. She is supremely dedicated to science and suppresses the concomitant need for love and desire.
* An abandoned orphan boy, highly beautiful in a time of beauty's escalating disvalue, meets a bitter yet passionate man of the mind, an exile and outcast. A relationship develops reminiscent of that between Gwynplaine and Ursus in Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs. It is beautiful, warm, and humorous.
* There is a young woman in full blossom who possesses a spirit higher than her station in life. She longs for the opportunity to fulfill the best within her and yet remains admirably serene. At the dawn of Christianity's dominance, she is the embodiment of the savvy businessman, shamelessly motivated by the profit motive. Will love be her deliverance?
* There is the religious zealot who resents, envies, hates, all that is good on this earth and life.
* There is the fickle rabble.
* There is the spirit of Plato now dominating over the spirit of Aristotle.
A dark world is looming and a brave, noble, youth--a genius--will fight to keep the torch of enlightenment burning amidst an atmosphere that promises to be increasingly suffocating.
Finally, what the entirety of Idolatry promises is the vision of an "Unknown God", the essence of what the greatest civilization of all time was eagerly seeking, touching it at times, but never with a full, firm grasp. And we begin to see it in Genesis, this new God. Yet, in Genesis, all the characters are human.
-- by Jose Gainza, reviewing *Genesis,* Part I of *Idolatry.* http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Idolatr...