Overview
Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction, selected by Ed Park
A novel described as Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson meets Child of God by Cormac McCarthy, Lore by Roy Kesey is a searing novel about loneliness, grief, and mercy.
Lore is a 76-year-old widow in rural Maryland who has chosen to seclude herself as a way to cope with her guilt and hide from a painful past. However, as the pandemic intensifies and her mind and body begin to fail, she feels a longing for a life beyond the confines of her mind and her home. What ensues is a deeply interior novel in which Lore reflects on her life, her marriage, her home and the land where it resides, her neighbors, her husband’s books which serve as both ritual and memorial, and her host of animals, including 10 parrots, a dog on wheels, and a cat we rarely see.
Kesey’s newest novel is served by a deep interiority reminiscent of Claire Keegan and Denis Johnson. It finds sacred value in the ordinary like a Marilynne Robinson novel, and bears a sense of existential isolation in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy. Lore is a testament to the beauty of daily living and all that seems mundane. It’s a poignant contemplation of life, regret, hope, and community, and asks a question of us all: in a world undone, is our best hope for survival actually each other?
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