Status Updates From The Bishop's Wife

I would have called this a five star book right up until the ending. And I think I just need some time to sit on the ending. Ultimately, very different from the book. And very beautifully written. I will say I wanted more for the characters.

Anyway, I was rereading an old interview with Beagle in which he name-dropped Robert Nathan, so I became curious and wikied. Born into a Sephardic Jewish family, and he wrote “The Bishop’s Wife”? Had to read. Beautifully written, sort of sweet and dry; rather sad portrait of a marriage; curious to see how the author is going to play it out and if it’s going to be terribly different from the movie.

Started reading this on my phone via archive.org as I sat in my book club for one. Sad! I had seven people in January and they were so enthusiastic, I don’t know what happened this month. I did have three people tell me they weren’t able to come, but I figured SOMEONE might have liked the book. Not this one, I mean “The Last Unicorn.” Oh well.

“Being mortal,” said Michael, “you will live a little longer than a grasshopper, but not as long as a turtle. Knowing that you must die, you are full of longing: you wish to experience something, and have it last for ever.”

"And he dreamed of a magnificent cathedral able to do honor to the city, and to his diocese. He imagined it rising into the clouds...It soared upward, in the direction of Heaven. immaculate, marble..."

I love watching The Bishop's Wife (1947 starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven) every year around Christmas. I don't know how I'm just now finding out it was adapted from this book.