Caim’s Reviews > Augustown > Status Update

“Love requires context, and they had none.”

“She disliked that so many of her people walked around with names like Lisa or Robert or George- names that tried to diminish the greatest part of who they were, of their history; names that weren't even names, but erasures. And maybe this was her hesitation with this name, Kaia— that it, too, seemed to be an erasure. It was trying to rub out part of the child.”

“Yet, they continue with an almost Sisphyean resolve.”

def. things that require a lot of hard work and yet will never be truly finished

🪄⚡️”Look, this isn't magic realism. This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliets. No. You don't get off that easy. This is a story about people as real as you…”

“"The story of Bedward is something completely different…is the story of a man who try his best to do something big, and to reach higher than any of we did think a man like him could ever reach..."

"Then again," she continues, "is probably just the everyday story of this goddamn island-just another striving man that this blasted country decide to pull down."

“Sister Gilzene get an understanding from this. We was losing faith. That was the problem.
Even Bedward was losing faith. And we had to build it back up fast. Even in the face of Babylon, we had to build back our faith.”

The story reads like a fable… I’m struggling to stay interested for 150 more pages, but I’ll will myself through it.

“But perhaps the specific wound that Mary left on him is in fact a sense of himself: a self he does not care to know but which he most certainly is.”