Sorrow

by Catherine Gammon

Reviews at Fjords, PANK, Coal Hill Review, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Necessary Fiction, Grab the Lapels, Pittsburgh Magazine, and Sappho’s Torque

Genres: Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2013

About the author

Catherine Gammon's new collection is The Gunman & The Carnival from Baobab Press. Her novels are The Martyrs, The Lovers; China Blue; Sorrow; and Isabel Out of the Rain. Her earlier story collection is Beauty and the Beast. Catherine's fiction has appeared in literary magazines for many years, including Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Cinncinnati Review, and The New England Review. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, among others. A Soto Zen priest, Catherine was ordained in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi by Tenshin Reb Anderson in 2005, at Green Dragon Temple / San Francisco Zen Center. Before Zen training, Catherine taught in the MFA program of the University of Pittsburgh, and she lives in Pittsburgh again, with her garden and her cat.

Reviews

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

SORROW is one of the few books written in our time that people will still be reading 100 years from now.

[Jess Simms · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I liked the most about "Sorrow" is the way it surprised me over and over again. Not just in regards to the plot movement and development of the characters, though those do take unexpected twists at several points. That element of surprise extends to the craft level with things like form, voice, and point-of-view. This makes me hesitant to review anything in much depth, because I wouldn't want to rob other readers of that experience. 

What I will say is that the voice of "Sorrow" is absolutely enchanting, something that feels a bit odd to say given the subject matter, but is true nonetheless. It has a dream-like quality that gives the book the feel of a fairy tale in places, like something that's happening on the edge of reality, despite the fact that nothing overtly supernatural ever happens. 

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely a heavy ready as the title suggests, but while writing this review I struggled to remember the plot of the book and had to read a synopsis of it so nothing too remarkable about this one.

[Melanie Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sorrow: a novel that surprises in the way that it waits. It waits for a good long time before surprising readers with the snake that springs out to grab with its fangs. This snake isn't the poisonous kind, per se, but more like the boa constrictor that bites and then squeezes and squeezes and waits....

Read the rest of the review at Grab the Lapels