Transcendent Kingdom

1 May 2021: “It took me many years to realize that it’s hard to live in this world. I don’t mean the mechanics of living, because for most of us, our hearts will beat, our lungs will take in oxygen, without us doing anything at all to tell them to. For most of us, mechanically, physically, it’s harder to die than it is to live. But still we try to die. We drive too fast down winding roads, we have sex with strangers without wearing protection, we drink, we use drugs. We try to squeeze a little more life out of our lives. It’s natural to want to do that. But to be alive in the world, every day, as we are given more and more and more, as the nature of 'what we can handle' changes and our methods for how we handle it change, too, that’s something of a miracle." --Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

Gyasi's quiet and moving novel, which I finished last night, resonated with me on several levels: her narrator loses a brother to opioid addiction, her other relationships are often fraught, and she finds work comforting, rewarding, and a retreat, even as she uses her work to not-so-subtly try to explore, understand, or even repair the parts of her life (and life in general) that are painful and tough. I also loved the meditation on religion, particularly a child's/young adult's shifting relationship with her faith. In some ways, it connects to Brandi Carlile's book, which is low-key mind-blowing.