Fire Sermon

by Jamie Quatro

Married twenty years to Thomas and living in Nashville with their two children, Maggie is drawn ineluctably into a passionate affair while still fiercely committed to her husband and family. What begins as a platonic intellectual and spiritual exchange between writer Maggie and poet James, gradually transforms into an emotional and erotically charged bond that challenges Maggie's sense of loyalty and morality, drawing her deeper into the darkness of desire.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels, Romance, The United States Of America, Religion

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2018

About the author

Jamie Quatro’s debut novel, FIRE SERMON (Grove, Jan 2018) is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and an Indie Next pick for spring 2018. Her 2013 collection I WANT TO SHOW YOU MORE was a New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, Indie Next pick, O, The Oprah Magazine Summer Reading pick, and New York Times Editors’ Choice. The collection was named a Top 10 Book of 2013 by Dwight Garner in the New York Times and a Favorite Book of 2013 by James Wood in The New Yorker, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize.

Quatro’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, Vice, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. Her stories are anthologized in the O.Henry Prize Stories 2013, Ann Charters' The Story and Its Writer, and the 2018 Pushcart Prize Anthology. A contributing editor at Oxford American magazine, Quatro teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program, and lives with her family in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

Reviews

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Garth Greenwell, whose book What Belongs To You (see my review), absolutely blew me away last year (it even ranked in the top five of the best books I read in 2016), took a pause from his social media hiatus to encourage people to read Jamie Quatro's Fire Sermon because of its absolute beauty, you can believe I listened.

I've got to say, Greenwell didn't steer me wrong. This book contains some of the most gorgeous prose I've read in some time, although the book as a whole didn't quite hit a home run for me. Still, there's so much raw emotion here—love, loss, hope, regret, fear, grief, wonder, and need—so it's really something.

"Was it something we carried in ourselves—something I sent out to you, and you sent out to me? Or did it exist independently, a potential fire hovering in the middle space between us, appearing only when we looked at one another? In which case, the second we stopped looking, the fire disappeared."

Maggie and Thomas met in college and married shortly after graduation. Maggie is a scholar, but is willing to put her educational pursuits on hold while she raises the couple's two children. She is happy (for the most part) doing her part to be the dutiful wife, devoted to her husband, her children, and God. While their relationship isn't perfect, she knows Thomas loves her passionately, and she feels secure in their life together.

When she resumes her teaching career, she begins a correspondence with James, a poet. At first, she is dazzled by his talent and marvels at their shared interest in theological writing, and their correspondence is professional and intellectual. But little by little, their communication transforms into something deeper, something that offers temptation, fantasy, perhaps even hope. When they finally meet, they are overcome by their feelings, and Maggie realizes all she has been missing her entire life.

Yet all too quickly, as strong as their feelings for each other run, they are consumed by guilt. Maggie must reconcile her devotion to God with her infidelity, her desire to throw everything away for James with the vows she took to love her husband until death do they part. They try to avoid seeing each other, even talking to one another, sticking solely to correspondence, but even that is tremendously difficult.

Will God forgive her? Should she confess to Thomas, even if that might jeopardize the family she holds so dear? Does she even deserve all that God gives her? Should she follow her heart, and stop caring about the consequences?

"(But would you leave a husband who, when you wake in the middle of the night, your body slick with sweat—dreaming you had to say goodbye to a man you slept with, once upon a time, but the man doesn't care, he has better things to do, he doesn't mind that he'll never see you again and the pain in your chest is so acute it forces you awake, gasping for air—this husband gets up to bring you a glass of water, then holds your hand across the mattress until you fall asleep? A man who, when your son brings home a girl who dropped out of high school and wants only to get married and have a kid, sits with her for an hour and talks about the benefits of higher education, offers to pay for her to take the GED and apply to colleges? Would you leave such a man? Or would you think: confess, repent, he is the one who should leave?)"

Fire Sermon examines one woman's struggles between the life she promised to live when she was 21 years old and the life she believes she so desperately wants, essentially a battle between duty and passion. At times powerful, at times quietly poignant, this is a book full of passion, conflict, need, and faith.

The book jumps between past and present, between Maggie's relationship with Thomas and her time with James, and also includes a great deal of theological conversation between Maggie and James, and Maggie's own conversations with God and an unidentified person. As someone who doesn't have much awareness of theology, while I understood the point that Quatro was making, I felt like those portions of the story slowed everything down and didn't quite work for me.

Maggie is a fascinating, fiery, flawed character, and Quatro draws her with such complexity. I was so taken by the storytelling and the language she used here, and I absolutely need to read her story collection now. Even though this book didn't quite knock me out, it's a story that really made me think, and I can't stop marveling at what a fantastic writer Quatro is.

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fire Sermon is a short intense book that can be read in one sitting. It flits back and forth in time, as Maggie struggles with her faith, her love for her husband Thomas, and her desire for possible lover James. I suppose the underlying story is familiar, but the execution is potent and at times beautifully written. The sex is fraught, and at times explicitly so. The emotions are uncomfortable, but not shocking to be shocking--rather, they feel like the honest complicated emotions of a conflicted person. And once I fell in step with its rhythm, I really appreciated the fragmented writing--snippets of thoughts, emails, conversations, and inner dialogues with Maggie's Christian God and a real or imagined therapist. It all comes together nicely -- including the choice Maggie makes at the end. This won't work for readers looking for straightforward stories or narratives, but it's definitely worth a try if you're open to fiction that is more meditative and non linear. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Meike · Rating 2 out of 5]

***Warning: This book might lead to excessive face-palming*** I found this tale about an evangelical woman who married young and now lusts for sexual experiences outside marriage pretty stale. The protagonist, Maggie, is 45, her children have left for college, and while her husband still wants to have sex, it's an ordeal for her - until she falls in love with a formalist poet (yes, you read that right: we're learning about the sex-appeal of formalism vs. the doctrines of the church). They exchange the most pretentious of messages - probably to indicate that Maggie is also longing for intellectual satisfaction that her MBA husband can't provide (cliché alarm!) - and have sex, Maggie ponders whether God wants her to be happy or to obey him, and that's pretty much it.

There are some themes that keep showing up in literature, and the combination of religion and adultery is certainly one of them, so in order to successfully write about it, you have to add something fresh or insightful, or at least find an innovative form. While Quatro's language itself isn't bad, she still doesn't do anything particularly interesting here, and her characters are almost caricatures, but it doesn't read like that was intentional. Maggie and her lover James are having some absolutely ridiculous pseudo-intellectual conversations that made me look for clues indicating that Quatro was trying to be funny (I didn't find them), and the husband feels like a plot device that shows traits needed to make points about the relationship between Maggie and James.

So my main question is: Why the hell is Quatro telling me all of this? There are some great books on this year's ToB longlist, so I hope we won't see this one in the brackets (https://themorningnews.org/article/th...).

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book in a day. I loved the varied styles and timeline that moves around, the lyric writing, and the subject matter. It is an honest look at a long marriage, and the attraction, connection, and other forces that can pull you away or bring you back. Since both central characters are academics, they have pretty deep conversations about religion, philosophy, desire, guilt, and I enjoyed this part of it too.

I will be ordering my own copy for rereading!

ETA: This is a great article about the religious aspects of the novel.

Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to this title in exchange for an honest review. The book comes out January 9. More from this author please.

[Jennifer (Insert Lit Pun) · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first "wow" book of the year, so I'm celebrating with a star rating. Good lord this book is good. Video review coming soon.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maggie is brought up in an evangelical family. She marries, and has children, young. Twenty years later, feeling trapped – and sick of her husband Thomas's pushy approach to sex – Maggie has an affair with James, a poet. Fire Sermon jumps back and forth through time, and in and out of Maggie's own first-person account, as it chronicles her life. That affair, as much an emotional and intellectual relationship as it is physical, is at the core of everything. Maggie traces her timeline backwards, obsessively analyses her desire for James, and wrestles with her faith. The battle between head and heart, the battle between one's ideas of God and sin, how a person understands their own behaviour in the context of their upbringing, education and personal history: these are the themes of the book.

My favourite parts were the letters and emails between Maggie and James. You see both characters come alive with ideas, the sparks flying from their intellectual connection before they've even laid eyes on each other. Other parts didn't work quite so well for me. There are slips into prose poetry, which is a style I just don't seem able to penetrate, absorb, or otherwise inhabit; these passages I found soporific and lifeless. I also struggled to put the pieces of Maggie's character together – from page to page she sometimes feels like a different person, not in a contains-multitudes way, but a not-entirely-cohesive-characterisation way.

And, I don't know – it's another story about comfortable, successful, attractive middle-aged white people having an affair, and I guess on some level I couldn't help but figuratively roll my eyes and sigh. I feel like these books always insist on telling us the characters are still really fit, look younger than they are, only have the slightest physical imperfections/signs of ageing, as if to depict them otherwise would make the sex disgusting or incomprehensible. Not this specific book's fault that I've come across this so many times before, obviously. But... blah.

Fire Sermon is a lyrical exploration of marriage, religion and the heat of obsessive passion, with some beautiful lines and images. Quatro gives us an interesting perspective on the cheating plot – I liked that Maggie approached the ethical questions raised by her affair through the twin prisms of her faith and her expertise in philosophy. I suppose my problem was that I didn't find the affair itself, or the people involved in it, interesting enough. Anna Raverat's Signs of Life remains my favourite infidelity narrative, and though it's much more idiosyncratic and conceptual, I preferred Catherine Lacey's The Answers as a story about a woman from an evangelical background learning to deal with relationships, love and sex.

I received an advance review copy of Fire Sermon from the publisher through Edelweiss.

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[Diane S ☔]

I am leaving this unrated. The author has I know intellectually done something unique. Combining guilt, infidelity, marriage and children, while struggling with Christian values. But I can't connect to these characters, so well written but alas not for me.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quatro’s portrayal of her protagonist’s marriage and family life was so rich, unclichéd, and deeply deeply powerful that this was a 4-star read (later downgraded to 3 stars) for me despite having hate-read much of the central story, about her affair: that core narrative was, by comparison, weak, uninteresting, marred by some of the worst sex writing in all of literature, and laden with literary and religious pretension. But the family story was so incredible that I can’t help exclaiming that Quatro is a writer to watch.

I have much more to say in my BookTube review: https://youtu.be/nuk6WeRqt-U

[Constantine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: Good

Genre: Literary Fiction

Fire Sermon is the story of Maggie, an evangelical married woman who is bored of her marriage and resorts to a sexual relationship with another man. She finds herself trapped between desire and guilt. Whenever she feels the guilt of cheating on her husband Thomas, she indulges deeper in her sinful desires with James. It feels like there is no escape for her and no other way to get out of this mess.

The story is a combination of adultery and religion, guilt and desire. The writing is lyrical at some parts and flowery but the theme of the book is not something that I would call beautiful. I don’t think Maggie is a character many readers can relate to. Her only consolation to make her cheating OK for herself was Maggie questioning her own actions and raising several questions about her unfaithfulness. The story is told in different narrative styles. Sometimes there are letters and emails to highlight the different views of the characters. I could not say I have enjoyed reading this book because it is not the kind of book you read for entertainment purposes, but overall it was a good read because I feel it was a thought-provoking novel even if I didn’t agree with the main character or some of her actions.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamie Quatro sets for herself the enormous task of wanting us to believe in a character who feels equal passion for her faith, her intellect, and her pursuit of erotic fulfillment. Does Quatro succeed in her task of making Maggie believable, her struggles real? She did for me.

I was raised in a deeply religious household and Maggie's choices felt right to me. Because my view is through the lens of childhood upbringing, it's impossible for me to say whether this story will work for someone without that background. Without that background I imagine it's hard to reconcile how the religious passion in Maggie relates to her intellectual passion, for instance, since people of faith often seem more interested in dogma than in intellectual questioning. And it will also be a leap for some readers to accept that her religious passion can translate into erotic feeling--the idea that both faith and erotic love require a similar surrender to a feeling greater than reason, so that the 'sin' of adultery can feel terribly similar to faith itself.

As I read this novel I thought about two other novels that placed similar demands on the reader, to take a leap of faith, so to speak: Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen, which asked readers to accept a world where religious miracles are attended to; and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, which asks readers to believe that a grown woman in the 20th century could be completely ignorant of sex on her wedding night. Some readers won't connect with these books, whereas other readers will feel, "yes, I totally believe that could happen."

[Jeannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at my library yesterday after reading an excellent review by Larry H here on GR. What an addictive read, I could not put it down!

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t think this book is really about what the book blurb suggests it is about. If you read the blurb, you think you will be reading a story about a woman (Maggie) who gradually falls in love with a poet she has a exchange of correspondence with (James). Then she has to deal with the guilt she feels over that because she is still committed to her husband (Thomas) and her two children.

If I am honest, that would not be a very interesting story. Maggie is an author and at one point she even says about her story:

"I imagine writing all this down and giving the manuscript to my agent. This has been done to death, she says. I won’t be able to sell this."

Some extra interest is generated by the fact that the narrative uses multiple formats (flashbacks, journal entries, counselling sessions and the correspondence between Maggie and James) and is written in a very non-linear fashion. In fact, the book starts after the events described in the blurb and then jumps around, so you can be forgiven for thinking you are reading the wrong book for a while.

But I think where the real interest in this story comes from is revealed in a counselling session that is recalled very early on in the book. Maggie’s counsellor reminds Maggie that she has, in fact, been in a similar situation three times before. Maggie is convinced the other three were false starts and this with James is the real thing. Her counsellor reminds her that is how she felt about the other three.

This means we are not just reading about “Maggie meets James, they fall in love but they are both married so how will they cope?”. If you read the blurb, you might think that is what you are going to get. We are instead reading about Maggie who, for some reason, cannot find fulfilment in her marriage and repeatedly looks outside of it, even if she often stops things before they go too far. James is the most recent and the most intense example of this, but he is not the only one. So, when the publisher’s webpage about the book says this is a

"compelling account of one woman’s emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual yearnings—unveiling the impulses and contradictions that reside in us all"

this is actually a far better description of a much more interesting book. And the resolution is a realistic view of how people can sometimes come to terms with those contradictions.

Rating this book is tricky. It was only towards the end and then thinking about it afterwards that I thought about the relevance of the counselling session at the start. So, the actual reading experience was a bit confusing as I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be reading about. But then thinking about it moved up a star, taking it to 3.5 stars. But you can’t give half stars, so it gets rounded down rather than up because there are several sex scenes and I didn’t find them sexy!

In the end, after some thought to clarify what I think it is about (I could be wrong, of course), this turned into an interesting read.

My thanks to the publisher for an ARC of this book received via NetGalley.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The intensity of love with the dark elements of religious obsession is explored in Jamie Quatro’s debut novel: Fire Sermon. Multiple levels of longing combined with the fury of passionate lust fuel an illicit relationship outside the routine stability of marriage. Maggie, a wife, mother of two college age students, was a writer based in Nashville where she connected with her lover. Maggie and James had been corresponding by email, text and phone conversations before his arrival in Nashville to teach a poetry workshop. An explosive sexual encounter followed which took place at the Hyatt Hotel.

Maggie, was raised in a strict Christian environment. The religious guilt she felt over her love and desire for James was unending. While probing her affair with James, her therapist reminded Maggie that before her obsessional focus on James, she had been in love with numerous other men who weren’t her husband. Maggie protested; explaining that these men were not the real deal compared to James. Maggie’s reasoning was immature and juvenile; she appeared to be shallow and totally selfish. The fact that she inherited a million dollars from her wealthy uncle didn’t help. At her second meeting-up with James, and he was texting his wife, Maggie observed:
"I wondered if I was one of the many, just another woman whom he'd taken up a clandestine conversation, one more frisson fueled by hurt and loneliness and the need to tap into some kind of creative energy, some in-loveness however fictitious to keep him working, and if his wife, knowing this pattern of his, was, rightfully mercifully insinuating herself between us."

Thomas, Maggie’s handsome husband, was an MBA in the financial sector. Blindly devoted to his wife, he was perplexed with her lack of sexual interest in him, and surprised Maggie with a sex toy in hopes of spicing up their love life. Of course, Maggie wasn’t thinking about Thomas or their marital woes. The premarital sex (fornication) she had with Thomas resulted in pregnancy and their early marriage, may have been a trigger that started her anxiety and obsessional thinking, as she pondered the temptations of Christ and considered confessing her affair.

In this strangely complex and unusual story, it was unclear why Maggie’s therapist didn’t help her sort her emotions following her affair or address her source of marital unhappiness. For such a pious individual, as Maggie, to experience such a tidal wave of guilt without holding herself accountable or responsible to change suggested an undisclosed serious emotional or mental illness. Despite this, we have a fascinating portrayal of an inner emotional conflict within a solid marriage. 3* GOOD. With thanks to the Seattle Public Library.

[Jessica Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The chase itself will turn us into monsters if we don't give it up."

This is an excruciatingly intimate little novel about a woman, Maggie, balancing her devotion to her husband, Thomas, with her desire for another man, James.

Vignettes of Maggie's family life—all the mundane snippets—are juxtaposed with her intellectually, spiritually and emotionally charged email correspondences and encounters with James. Complicating matters even more is Maggie's Christianity and profound devotion to God.

Novels that center around religion typically turn me off, but Fire Sermon portrays Maggie's faith in such a metaphysical and intellectual manner that it utterly captivated even me—so I urge you, don't write this novel off because I guarantee you it's much more than what it appears to be. I devoured it in two sittings.

Fire Sermon is a gorgeous and cerebral book about the nature of desire and longing—particularly the forbidden kind—and how one woman learns to cope with it.

[Briar's Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was my best surprise of the year. To be honest, I just picked up a random book from my shelf. I decided that I would just take a very un-calculated risk and pick up whatever book my eyes went to - and this book was it.

Fire Sermon is an incredible novel following the journey of a religious woman who begins to have an affair on her husband. The narrative is not your typical romance novel, it's truly a dramatic unfolding of the character. I loved this character study and how beautifully Jamie Quatro could write out this woman's feelings and experiences. Seriously, it blew me out of the water. I truly did not expect this book to be half as good as it was.

Jamie Quatro has a beautiful writing style, full of metaphors and truly engaging descriptions. This book could have been a real flop because of the subject matter, but it had me hooked at every single word. There isn't one thing I would change about this book because it truly was just mesmerizing. I highly recommend it! I'm almost frustrated that I didn't read it sooner! This is one incredible, lovely and amazing piece of literature that I think anyone who loves drama and riveting reads should pick up.

Maggie has a 'romantic' relationship with her husband, but begins to fall in love with an intellectual poet. She's cheating on her husband, but doesn't know how to deal with it. The sex with her husband isn't all that great and it hurts, but she feels like she owes him his pleasure. The more she engages in infidelity, the more she questions herself. Can someone truly fall out of love or change their feelings about someone? Will God understand what she has done?

Even if you're not religious, I think this book is an excellent view into one woman's perspective. Yes, it's fiction but it does really open your eyes to another world. The struggles and changes in a woman's life can be more troublesome than one thinks and I loved that Jamie opened us into Maggie's world. The story is absolutely breathtaking.

Five out of five stars.

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5, rounded up. Like a guilty paramour leaving an unsatisfying relationship, I almost want to apologize to this book, saying "Honestly, it's not you - it's me"! But then again, if I had only felt any connection to this tale of the unrelieved religious guilt caused by a momentary affair, told from the point of view of a married female poet/academic ... but I didn't, so I have to feel the author's lack of extracting universal truths from these specifics bears some responsibility for my lack of enthusiasm.

Clearly the author has a way with words - certain sections are rendered in lovely, lyrical prose - but then, others get so bogged down in uninteresting minutiae, that I felt like skipping whole passages (one of which, during which the protagonist is in the midst of a religious/sexual frenzy, is a shoe-in for the annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award; sorry I can't cite it, but the publishers have requested no quotes from these uncorrected proofs). Speaking of which - I still can't QUITE decide if my Kindle was just exhibiting formatting errors, or if indeed, this was written in a purposely odd linguistic style that mashes together sections that should be separated, and foregoes standard grammar/punctuation - somehow, I despair that it is indeed the latter.

But back to the sex for a moment - I suppose you have to feel sorry for someone whose only two choices seem to be between a hunky, but dull, hubby with a dildo/vibrator fetish ... and a doughy effete poet who prefers 'back door entry' so as not to compete with Sex Partner # 1. But ... YEESH!! Given her religious obsession, I'd opt for a life of celibacy!

Since it was a very quick read, taking less than a full day to get through, and I didn't actively HATE it, I begrudgingly give it a 2.5, but I can't truly recommend it. My sincere thanks, however, to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me access to an advanced reading copy, in exchange for this honest review.

[Gelisvb · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't understand if this is a truly awful book or the author was being provocative.
I surely hope for the second, because if not, this book can be read as an apology for domestic rape.A strong one. This book tries to convince us that this husband is a good person with a bad habit, that is raping his wife when she is not in the mood for sex. Nobody is perfect ,right?
Maggie, the protagonist, thinks that it's okey to be raped because she feels guilty for not wanting to have sex.
Also, the author tries to convince us that the reason why she doesn't want to have sex with her husband is because he is not religious. And she means it.
I don't know if the author is a catholic, but I hope not, because if she is, then she has a really fucked up idea of what it means being living as a christian. Domestic rape is for sure not on the list of things to suffer for a good christian woman.
Maggie was supposed to be religious but what I saw were mostly excuses not to take responsibilities than faith.
There were also some seriously worrying messages, like : if you resist( being raped, staying married to a man you don't love and losing the love of your life), you can gain happiness in growing old because everything passes and you can have the postcard, american dream family.
And finally the cherry on the cake: marriage is the cure for being a closet lesbian.Perfect.Just perfect.

But let's be positive and think that no, the author was being provocative: it would be still a one star book because a) it was incredibly boring, b) it wasn't clear if she meant what she was writing or not, c)it was a bad representation of religion.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many books focus on romantic affairs, but it takes something special to shed new light on this common subject. Two of my all-time favourite novels that explore the dynamics of an affair are Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” and Anne Enright’s “The Forgotten Waltz” which both feel so searingly honest in portraying the complicated emotions of all three of the people involved. Jamie Quatro’s “Fire Sermon” adds an entirely new dynamic charting the trajectory of an affair over her protagonist Maggie’s lifetime. Shifting back and forth through time, the story recounts the beginning of her marriage to Thomas, the intense moment when she and poet James decide to go to a hotel together and the complicated aftermath. In a series of letters (sent and unsent), conversations with a therapist and recollections of moments from Maggie’s life she searches for meaning and an understanding of her choices. Since she was raised religiously and continues to study religious texts, her reasoning is inflected with a complicated spiritual dynamic. The novel builds to a powerfully heartfelt and intense communion with the self.

Read my full review of Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro on LonesomeReader

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most intellectually stimulating novel about infidelity I’ve ever read – and let’s face it if you read lit fiction you’ve read a lot of books about infidelity. There’s so much James Salter in this book and it had me aching to re-read him. Quatro has done something very special and literary and poetic here.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jamie Quatro is a fine writer and the last 50 pages of this book were so elegantly written that I wished the entire book had lived up to this promise. But like writers before her, Jamie Quatro strives to align an understanding and devotion to God with a so-called sinful extramarital affair. For this non-believer, it did not work.

Maggie is married to Thomas, an imperfect man and father of her two children, who strives and often succeeds in being a good husband. Somewhere along the line, she begins a platonic relationship with James, a formalist poet, who writes about “the apocalyptic suffering created by a market economy.” If that weren’t insufferable enough, both of them seem to view what is portrayed as an intimate and sensual affair through the lends of classic Catholicism.

The problem is that the theological overlay competes with the hot passion we, as readers, are supposed to experience through Maggie’s need to have unmet desires met. It is evident that these two are platonic soulmates but true lovers? It didn’t quite come across. And, for those of us who are non-believers, the emphasis on the intellectual denied the big question at the heart of religion: Did Christ in fact, exist in the way it was reported by acolytes 400 years after his death?

It becomes increasingly obvious that Maggie is playing mind games to deceive herself and perhaps the reader, about her real needs. Granted, she is in desperate need of religious dialogue. While her exchanges with James are intriguing to read, they seemed head games as opposed to ultimate physical/emotional love—a forced conflation of theology with passion.

But oh, the last part. when Maggie is able to state in a clear-eyed manner, “I admit to using my religious beliefs to manipulate, resisting temptation as a means of feeding my own desire.” Or this: “You will say I am condoning sin. Constructing an intellectual scaffolding to justify what should be renounced.”

As the intellectual scaffolding begins to be dismantled, we see this novel’s true potential: the tale of a yearning woman, married to a good man, who meets her intellectual soulmate and who, like Icarus, flies too close to the flames. Her big question: “What if God…ordained marriage…to place us into a condition in which erotic desire might thrive.?” By untethering her characters to explore that question, this would have been a very good book indeed.

[Edward Goetz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book and the author's distinct voice. The book reminded me of Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach," a favorite of mine. There is a somewhat similar plot regarding marriage.

[Paltia · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are parts of this book that are so beautifully written. For me, they are the descriptions, however banal they may seem to some, of the place where the family lived, or the color of the water - peridot. One can ease down into them, becoming lost in one’s own memories. There are parts of this book that are so alien to me that I confess to hurrying through. When Quatro desperately wants to impress her reader, her critics, or is it herself, with her theories about religion, guilt, etc. I start to get restless and yawn. Her self righteousness and elitist ideas about family create shoulder shrugging indifference. Keep to the beauty of the natural world and poems. It was an an okay read but one l’m likely to forget by the enshrouding fog of sunset.

[LauraBeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to distill in this book and I should preface this review with the disclaimer that I probably have way too many filters that I'm viewing the content through, to be able to review this book in a way that seems adequate, fair and non-judgy.

Here's the bottom line: it's another book about a bored housewife who is entering into middle age, has an affair and convinces herself that her affair partner is actually the man that she should have ended up with. Sound familiar? That's because it is. Does the author know it's familiar? Yes (she even has a passage in the book where her character imagines her agent turning down a book based on the same premise because of its familiarity). So Quatro tried to put a twist on the story and attempted to align longing with spirituality. Some of her musings on religion came off to me as deadly accurate and some came off as bad theology.

Along similarly uneven lines, I thought the writing veered between well-crafted and terrible (I think Quatro is a gifted writer but she may write better short stories than novels). There are some "deep" discussions that transpires between the main character, Maggie and her affair partner, James - but it all seems so... smug and self-serving. Sometimes it's akin to listening to a pretentious conversation between two university professors who have never held a job outside of academia, nor have talked to anyone outside of academia (or it's like reading those eye-rolling emails between Natalie Portman and Jonathan Safran Foer). It's almost as if the philosophical conversations had to cover up the simple cliche that the characters were trodding down a well-worn path that is as old as time. Maggie has convinced herself that she has finally found love with James, when in reality, she just found someone as insufferable as she is is (although insufferable, I genuinely liked how flawed a character that Maggie was and appreciated that she had a lot of self-awareness for how the optics appear when she talks about herself and the affair).

I liked Maggie's head vs heart tug of war but as far as the actual story goes, the head won and the heart lost. Maggie knows theology on an intellectual level but it seems she's never connected religion to her heart (which seems why her efforts at equating desire and longing with spirituality seem novel to her). She does seem to have connected the written word to her heart, which seems to be why she fell for James, a poet, in the first place. At some point in the story she compares theology to poetry and this was where I was hoping she'd finally make the connection of theology to heart but it seemed to eclipse her.

As far as characters reconciling guilt from sin with forgiveness from God, I think The End Of The Affair does it better. I was never sure as to why exactly Maggie wore religion like it was a shackle and a prison sentence (other than that pesky belief that Christianity frowns upon adultery). Since Maggie was someone who was raised in the church, she seemed to miss the sermons about freedom - and for all of her university knowledge of theology - this critical tenet seems to go unobserved. But it's not only religion that confines Maggie - everything for Maggie is a prison sentence: her husband, her home, her career as a writer, her kids. Maggie is the sort of person who can (and does) go on vacations that are accessible to the wealthy and find misery while on it.

Since this book tried to align longing and desire with theology - I thought that it would have been better had Quatro overlaid the the story with the four major Biblical themes of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. But as it stands, the book neglected to explore the last two. I do think that hidden in the sub-text of this book is the message of grace and forgiveness (but it gets lost and instead dwells on guilt, shame and self-loathing). The author wants the reader instead to come away with the belief that the frame-work of marriage is valuable because it's the one deterrent to tame our desires. In short, she tweaks the Pence/Billy Graham rule (never be alone with a woman because it could offer a tempting scenario), to society needing marriage because without it, we'd all just be flooded with uncontrollable temptation, mate like rabbits and never be satisfied:

Excerpted from book: "But what if (Brothers, Sisters, bear with me) the institution of marriage was given to us as an intentional breeding ground for illicit desire?...Hear: without the prohibitions against fornication and infidelity, we would sate and sate and sate again, looking always for the next object in which to find fulfillment, we would gratify our longings until we had nothing left to long for, and the ability to long itself died off."

This book may feed the head but it left my heart wanting much more.

[Sub_zero · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Así que ya ves: no queda nadie con quien poder confesarme. Nadie me escuchará ni me entenderá. Estás tú, y está Dios. Ya no tengo claro si existe alguna diferencia».

Maggie, la protagonista y narradora de El sermón del fuego, es una mujer de cuarenta y cinco años que lleva media vida casada con su primer novio, al que conoció en la universidad. Aunque el suyo no es un matrimonio puramente desdichado, siente que el hastío, la insatisfacción y la falta de entendimiento se han instalado en su dormitorio por tiempo indefinido. Al tiempo, Maggie inicia una correspondencia por correo electrónico con James, un famoso poeta con el que mantiene apasionados debates sobre teología y literatura mística. Esta fascinante comunión de ideas e impresiones prende en Maggie una llama que llevaba tiempo apagada, despertando en ella la urgente necesidad de cometer un pecado ante el que su férrea educación religiosa se rebela por completo.

En su sobresaliente debut como novelista, la escritora estadounidense Jamie Quatro se zambulle en las tempestuosas mareas del deseo sexual desde una perspectiva condicionada por el incesante aguijonazo de la culpa. Desde San Juan de la Cruz y Teresa de Jesús, ningún otro escritor ha probado tan bien como Jamie Quatro que el orgasmo no es más que otra faceta del éxtasis espiritual. Sin embargo, consumado el adulterio, la protagonista de El sermón del fuego se flagela de manera despiadada por su debilidad mientras trata, sin demasiado éxito, de rastrear el origen de su incandescente libido.

La novela de Quatro es, ante todo, de una intensidad espectacular. La autora consigue plasmar el visceral dilema ético de Maggie con una honestidad desgarradora. Provocadoras blasfemias y arrebatos de arrepentimiento se intercalan entre las páginas de El sermón del fuego a través de una cronología inquieta que trata de abarcar en su plenitud la relación intermitente de Maggie y James. El retrato que hace Jamie Quatro de su protagonista, lejos de maniqueísmos y moralinas, es el de una mujer devota que, no obstante, se pregunta por qué Dios exige unos estándares tan elevados a personas que no parecen capaces de resistir los envites del erotismo.

¿Debe ella aferrarse al resquicio de dignidad que le queda y confesar? ¿Merece la pena sacrificar una existencia apacible por una pasión que recompensa el placer con una conciencia atormentada? A medida que la historia alcanza su conclusión, el carácter aparentemente virginal e inocente de la narradora se va difuminando entre atisbos de una vileza sobrecogedora. Resquicios a los que uno puede asomarse para comprobar, estupefacto, que la culpabilidad puede convertirse en el afrodisíaco definitivo.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm torn between 2 and 3 stars for this one, an unpopular opinion, I know. Everyone hails this book as startlingly original. But as the main character even admits, Maggie is every cliché in the book. It's a story about adultery, and the main character's attempts to excuse it by wrapping it in pretentious literary and religious philosophy. She's a former academic, her lover is a formalist poet with "sight" tattooed on one wrist and "vision" on the other. Let the eye-rolling commence. Part Two is their email exchange as their affair gets going, some of the most cringe-worthy, navel-gazing sophistry I've read in a while. Even Maggie's agent, when Maggie proposes writing about her story, tells her it's been done to death and isn't something she could sell. But unlike Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, Maggie never has to deal with any repercussions. She just lies to her husband and they move on toward her imagined blissful old age. I don't know whether Quatro means us to take Maggie seriously or ironically, but either way, she and her gas-bag lover are detestable characters and their moral, ethical, and religious attempts at justification for their "profound union" are empty bullshit. On the other hand, Quatro's prose was excellent. Too bad it was wasted on this story.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jamie Quatro’s debut novel, Fire Sermon, does something that I have never seen in a mainstream contemporary novel: it introduces an objective moral dimension to a fairly standard emotional dilemma. In other words, Quatro’s protagonist Maggie believes strongly and passionately in God, and also enters into an emotional affair (which, don’t you worry, becomes very physical) with a fellow writer, James. What saves this book from being another novel about sad white writers in bad marriages (thanks to Roxane Gay for that spot-on category) is precisely the presence of God in it. It’s not a novel that requires its reader to believe in God; it does require its reader to believe that other people can believe in God – intelligent, intellectual people – sincerely and without irony. Quatro’s adulterous lovers are drawn to each other first for the quality of one another’s minds: if your idea of flirtation is verbal sparring about metaphysical poetry and the Western apophatic tradition, then you’re going to find Fire Sermon very sexy. This also allows for a novel where adultery actually matters. The stakes are much higher, and the agony more pronounced, here than they strictly need to be; these people suffer not because society makes them, but because they want to hold themselves to a standard of behaviour and feeling that is incompatible with most of the other things that they want. That kind of suffering, the kind you enter with open eyes, has a very different quality to the more socially-ordained kind; you are not a victim of it in the same way. Faith is a hard habit to shake, and some people are built for it; consider Flannery O’Connor’s “Christ-haunted” South. In addition to this deep sense of conviction, Fire Sermon is also richly allusive (C.S. Lewis! T.S. Eliot! Jane Gardam! Maggie Nelson! Sharon Olds!) I want more books about Christians like this: confused, fucked-up, questioning, questing.

[Jerrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to think about this one a bit before writing my review. I did enjoy the poetic writing style, although it got a little confusing at times as it abruptly switches POV and timelines. There is a lot of heart and raw emotion in this book, but I really disliked the protagonist. I was bothered by her victim attitude and the agonizing over her religious convictions and guilt around the choices that she willingly made. I kind of wanted to smack her.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life is messy. And sometimes we make it messier still. Take Margaret – or Maggie, to her friends. She comes from a well-off and tight-knit family which has given her a comfortable and solid upbringing. Raised an Evangelical, she remains a committed Christian into adulthood. Indeed, her approach to religion is quite intellectual, with a lively interest in comparative religions (and particularly the contrast between Western and Eastern faiths), early Church fathers and mysticism. Maggie is an academic, “nerdy” type – she graduates with flying colours in her early twenties. At around the same time she marries Thomas, choosing to abandon the prospects of a glittering career to dedicate time to her new family. She does keep contacts in academia though, retains modest teaching posts over the years and also tries her hand at creative writing, particularly poetry. As for Thomas, he’s a successful professional, an all-round decent guy and a good-looking one at that, the type of man who gladly helps out with their son and daughter, who would never cheat on his wife and who makes Maggie’s female friends rather jealous. The cherry on the cake is an unexpected legacy from a rich uncle which makes what seems an already charmed life even easier, enabling Thomas and Maggie to settle down comfortably in Nashville with their kids.

Could there be a marriage as strong and stable as Maggie’s? It seems not. But in her forties, Maggie embarks on a correspondence with James, a (married) poet who shares her spiritual and literary concerns. And what starts as a seemingly innocent exchange of emails eventually leads to a physical encounter, consummated with a passion that Maggie has never known with her husband. This experience is so beautiful to Maggie that she finds she cannot condemn her actions, even whilst seeking to save her marriage to another man she also loves, and whilst struggling to remain true to her principles and Christian values.

This is Jamie Quatro’s first novel, following the publication of an acclaimed collection of stories some years back. And what a breathtaking debut it is. What I particularly enjoyed is its original and yet beguiling storytelling approach, which seems to draw us effortlessly into Maggie’s mental struggles. Maggie is clearly the protagonist and she remains the focal point throughout the novel. Yet the perspective seems to be constantly shifting, thanks to continuous changes in the narrative mode. There are passages in the first person, others in a more “objective” (is it?) third person; there are flashbacks and flashforwards, passages of dialogue, extracts from journals, prayers; there’s a lot of philosophy and theology; there are what seem to be transcripts of counselling sessions (although they could be read as Maggie arguing with herself, or with God); there’s poetry – and I mean actual poems, not poetic writing (although there’s much of that too). And, towards the end, there’s the “Fire Sermon” itself, Maggie’s defiant statement/confession/manifesto about sin, temptation, God, marriage, love. All these seem to be pieces of a mosaic which build into an intriguing psychological, emotional portrait.

The novel works at many levels. It is, in essence, a love story (or two of them rolled into one). It is a family saga with elements of a coming-of-age novel. But it is also a book rich in philosophical insights about religion(s), about how faith informs the life of practising Christians and about how these same believers can convince themselves that they are in the right, even when acting against religious tenets they hold dear. You might not agree with Maggie’s choices or with her theology. No problem – she is herself often contradictory and admits as much. But her spiritual journey is the stuff of great novels. I’m ready to bet that this will be one of the most talked-about debuts in the coming year.

A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

[Jenbebookish · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I admit to playing up the innocence angle."

"I admit that I loathe God for creating the universe in such a helpless situation-knowing it would get itself into this kind of trouble, creating it anyhow."

"But would you leave a husband who, when you wake in the middle of the night, your body slick with sweat-dreaming you had to say goodbye to a man you slept with, once upon a time, but the man doesn't care, he has better things to do, he doesn't mind that he'll never see you again and the pain in your chest is so acute it forces you to awake, gasping for air-this husband gets up to bring you a glass of water, then holds your hand across the mattress until you fall asleep? A man who, when your son brings home a girl who dropped out of high school and wants only to get married and have a kid, sits with her for an hour and talks about the benefits of higher education, offers to pay for her to take the GED and apply for colleges? Would you leave such a man? Or would you think, confess, repent, he is the one who should leave?"

Well, that was NOT what I expected. What did I expect? Something juicy. Something scandalous. And what did I get? A commentary on yearning for someone other than the one you're with, and all the guilt that is associated with that, with some God stuffs mixed in. That literally sums it up in the most succinct and accessible way possible.

That being said...
I didn't like this. It sounds like something I would like, or at least connect with having had my own experiences with this very thing. But I have loved two people at once, and struggled with the different types of love, and the betrayal that is loving two men at once. I have struggled with the feeling of impending doom, knowing that I must choose, and knowing that to choose means to lose. I guess I wanted more of that. I mean, I'm not the only one who likes to see my own experiences mirrored in works of art, songs, etc right? We've all clung to some lyric in some song and applied it to our own lives right? I guess what I was hoping for was more of a struggle between two men, and while our MC certainly struggled, she did not love her husband, and instead loved a man who was not her husband. There was guilt, and shame, and tough choices, but Maggie felt guilty because her husband was a good man, but not because she loved that good man.

It's a little more complex than that. That's where the God stuffs comes in. Maggie always having had a complex relationship with God, dutiful, but above all else guilty. It takes the whole catholic guilt thing to another level. Her entire relationship with God as we see it consists entirely of guilt. I looked and looked but could not find the part of Maggie that loved. That felt joy. And isn't that ultimately what God is supposed to be? Loving? Forgiving? Overwhelming joy and glory? But it starts off with Maggie having sex with Thomas, the man who would become her husband. She offered it to him as a form of comfort, after hearing of his broken childhood home. But almost immediately she is repentant, feeling guilty, confessing, praying, promising to marry him because the act of lovemaking has married her to him already in the eyes of God. And what do you know, she actually marries him, this man that she slept with to give him solace, devoid of desire on her part entirely. But she is a Godly woman, and Godly women are married to God, and desire is so closely tied up with sin that it clearly is not a necessity for Maggie. She marries Thomas in order to maintain her purity, reasoning that marrying the man she fornicated with will undo the sinfulness of the act. It's her way of repenting. So naturally, unfulfillment is a constant in her life with her husband, whom she chose only as a form of repentance. Their sex life is unfulfilling to her because she does not desire him, and so in turn to him as well. This leads to forceful encounters, which only leads to her becoming all the more distant. Also naturally, Maggie finds herself tempted by other men regularly. Of course when you are married to someone that you never really chose in the first place, your eye will constantly wander to those you might've chosen if you had had the chance. And so of course Maggie eventually falls in love with another man. In my opinion, she was a completely contradictory character that made zero sense to me. If you are so wrapped up in religion and God that you would marry a man simply because you slept with him once and feel the need to repent for this sin, then you would think this fear of God would dictate other aspects of your life. Like maybe you wouldn't be the kind of woman who develops crushes/obsessions with all kinds of other men, all the time. During a trip to a psychiatrist, some mystery psychiatrist that is never explained or really introduced but just sorta IS present in parts of the book, it is revealed to us that Maggie has insisted on her being in love with someone else many, many times. With this guy, with that guy, with her PRIEST even! This seemed odd to me. Maggie, religious, Godly Maggie is running around wanting men left and right? What the hell? But okay, I reasoned a bit, Maggie is still human, desire is a part of nature, even being religious cannot stifle what is possibly the most natural part of life, and Maggie having been married to the first and only man she's ever slept with, a man she never even really wanted, well it makes sense that she might crush on other man, fantasize about what it would be like to be with someone else. Okay, fine. I'll give her that. But she's playing with fire, over and over and over again. When she writes to James, a poet to whom she has a very strong visceral reaction to, (well, to his work. Initially.) and begins their correspondence, then proceeds to meet up with him? Well where's Godly Maggie then? Yah, sure, we are all sinners, nobody is without sin, everybody is temped by things, yadda yadda yadda,but I just couldn't connect Maggie the woman who allowed her guilt to dictate her life so much that she allowed guilt to choose her spouse for her, to the Maggie who very seemingly sought James out. And then to do what she did, which is struggle for months, years with the guilt, toying at first with the idea of having an affair, putting it off and off and off for so long because oh she's just so guilty and it's just so wrong. But then why continue to see him? You know it's gonna happen Maggie, so why put it off for months? Why torment yourself with the guilt after if you're going to continue doing it?

That's not fair of me to say. Just because we feel guilty about something doesn't mean we can stop doing it. I know this better than anyone. But in Maggie's case, I just didn't buy her bullshit. If I'm being 100% honest, she seemed selfish, and completely self absorbed. The entire duration of the story Maggie is just so guilty. And yet not guilty enough to refrain. Only so guilty as to recognize that what she's doing is wrong and that she shouldn't be doing it, shouldn't want to be doing it, and then to continue on to do whatever she wants anyway and then go on to feel guilty afterwards and then ponder the meaning of and reasons for guilt. She's basically philosophically examining her guilt while simultaneously remaining strangely compartmentalized. I heard her talk about feeling guilty, but I didn't really feel that she really felt it. In fact, she was consistently distant and removed seeming. It felt more like a writer writing than an actual person feeling and experiencing.

Anyway. Aside from my personal judgements on Maggie, there was a lot about the way the book was written that I didn't like. It was fragmented, reverting back and forth in time in a manner that was confusing, and so much of the book was back and forth letters between James and Maggie that were absolutely ridiculous. Dramatic, as only poets and writers can be, and just all together gratuitous. I was not interested in Maggie enough to be interested in her aimless musings.

I was disappointed. To say the least. But hey, at least the book isn't very long, barely 200 pages and half of them are formatted in such a way that hardly more than half of the page is actually used. Didn't waste much time on this, thankfully.

I'll leave you with this bit, the one line in this book that truly, truly spoke to me:

"Pets are a fucking waste, Tommy says, chin quivering. There just ticking time bombs of sadness."

Petto!

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite finding the religious content of this slightly alienating, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The mix of mediums and time frames, the lyrical nature of the prose, the palpable pain and guilt of the narrator - Jamie Quatro sure can write, and I'll definitely be checking out her short story collection in the future.