I think I always, on some level, wanted to read a full novel-length version of Candle Cove and I certainly got some level of it here.
My friend read this before and I kept seeing the cover around. I’ve been haunted by the magenta cover with the test pattern TV for ages now, so I just broke down and read it. And truly, I don’t regret it at all.
How much can I say without giving it away?
(A lot, this blog isn’t a review blog, it’s just me, logging my shit)
I think I felt the religious trauma from early on. This book is Religious Trauma and How it Fucks You Up, really. The indoctrination, the struggle to resist, the way it looks when you actually look at the memories. How it affected you. A mysterious, magic man that swoops in to direct, to point the way, to make sure you fit into the society that has put you in his clutches— c’mon. And then the narrative shifting in the meta and the book itself.
An exhausting upbringing in the midst of the struggle. The desire to escape all mention of it, to deny yourself a god, because a god hurt you. The slow realization that you can be your own god, or allow a gentle god, a presence.
