"Come here and see."

29 July 2025: This post's title comes from the last line of These Days, by Lucy Caldwell, the novel my little book club is reading this month. Reading it on my kindle, I didn't realize that was the last line--and when I did, my breath caught and I almost had to stifle a sob. It's hard to explain why, but I'll try. 

The book's subject matter--a family (and others) in the days of the 1941 Belfast Blitz--is dark and heavy. Yet the book is so beautiful and intricately rendered. What do you do in the face of such cruel, meaningless devastation? "Just keep going" is way too simple an answer, perhaps (though we know it's true). "Come here and see," though? In this book--which shows such a profound reverance for people, their everyday lives, their hidden thoughts and dreams, and desires--"come here and see" serves a kind of ethos and answer.