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by
Darnell
Arnoult
Book Review written by Hannah Leatherbury
Women hear
voices. Some are the voices of those that they love and care for,
some are voices that come from the mouths of men they’ve met only
once in their lives and some are voices that can only be described
as divine. Reading Darnell Arnoult’s “Sufficient Grace” reminded me
that most of the women in my life are taking care to listen to the
world around them in tandem with the world inside of themselves. In
the space that exists between listening and reacting, these women
find their inspiration.
Gracie Hollaman
is a woman who begins paying more attention to her own voices at the
opening of the book, when the messages and omens in her life are
only just beginning to make sense to her. When her husband, Ed,
comes home to a well-cooked meal with Gracie’s shredded credit cards
in the center of his dining room table and a missing Buick, he only
begins to understand that the woman he has been married to for
thirty years has been “called” away. Arnoult takes us from the story
of Gracie and Ed, to the story of Mamma Toots, Mattie and Tyrone,
and then to the story of Sister Reba, the traveling preacher with a
family left behind by choice. Arnoult’s writing is filled with
little pieces of wisdom that her characters preach to one another
and to themselves; “Life doesn’t always go the way you think it
will. You have to change course sometimes, recalculate your
direction and pray for the best. Pray that in the end, when the dust
settles, despite your sins, you are blessed.”
Each of
Arnoult’s chapters are shaped by religious terms “offering”,
“benediction” and “sufficient grace,” they lead her small world of
characters through transitions and turning points. In the voice of
sister Reba, a woman who knows “the sacred to be as daily as a loaf
of bread and iceberg lettuce,” Arnoult gives us a taste of what her
voices and hard listening as writer have inspired: “The little
things accumulate in such familiar and sometimes troubling ways…that
we only see those small pieces and can’t see the miracle that is
there. Like the blind man feeling parts of the elephant, we humans
separate ourselves from the full picture of our own divinity.”
Due out this
month, “Sufficient Grace” will remind readers that we are part of a
much bigger story -- that our lives connect in the most mysterious
of ways. |
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