I requested Fire Sermon in 2018 because I was utterly intrigued by the blurb. It turns out I didn't have the life experience or maturity required to fully engage with it until now. For that, I apologise. But now, when I'm nearing thirty, Fire Sermon resonates with me in a way that it never would have five years ago. Fire Sermon is a searing read, one which questions love, faith, identity and more while telling a relatively simple tale. Thanks to Picador and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay!

I would call myself a Christian, and yet I've been told frequently that I don't really fit the criteria. This usually comes up when I tell people that I don't necessarily think it's all true, from Creation to Resurrection, but that I do like to believe in it. Faith is not the same as fact, for me. It doesn't have to be true to give me comfort or to challenge me. My faith does not stand in opposition to my trust in science, for example. People find it difficult to understand this when I first say it, but usually go along with it once I've kinda explained. I also don't go to church, unless I happen to be in my hometown. I only go to church then because I grew up in that building and its quiet, sober space is like a second home. My faith is like that building. Grand and dramatic at times, but also quiet and unadorned. It is something I question and something that challenges my world-view. I give all this background information because I think my engagement with my faith is why Fire Sermon resonated on a certain level with me. Maggie's faith is something she grew up with and couldn't get rid off, even if she tried. It is also something that moved and shifted with her as she grew. Throwing off the constraints of organised religion and exploring other avenues towards faith allows Maggie to expand her understanding. And yet it also continues to confuse her. There are no easy answers when it comes to faith, or life, or self. Faith is only one lense through which to approach the world and the way Quatro uses faith, both Christian and Eastern movements, was illuminating. In the exchanges between Maggie and James there is so much interesting theology happening that I know I'll have to reread Fire Sermon in the future.

Fire Sermon is far from a straightforward story, both in the sense that there is a lot going on and in that it is not told chronologically. Maggie is looking back on her affair with James, a poet whose work has breathed new life into her. Raised religiously, her faith has always been a big cornerstone of Maggie's life and yet it is also something she has come to question, reshape, and battle with. What is God? What is faith? Is it an excuse? Is it a reason? Is it calm or is it chaos? As Maggie moves through her life, from her early marriage to motherhood, from a discontinued PhD to her first poems, her views shift and only become more complicated as they become entangled with her ideas of herself as a woman. The crux of the book, I think, rests on this division between soul and body which is so entrenched in Christianity. If our body is aflame with sensation, is that temptation or is that purification? Should we resist every bodily impulse or are those very impulses ways for us to get to know ourselves better? While all of this makes it sound like Fire Sermon is a very intellectual and spiritual novel, which it is, it is also incredibly physical and grounded. This sometimes threw me for a loop a little and it doesn't always resonate equally successfully, but Fire Sermon remains a fascinating insight into a woman's mind.

What astounded me about Fire Sermon was the raw emotion which came through on every page. Maggie is utterly aflame in feeling and thought and I couldn't help but be reminded of that famous sculpture, 'The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa'. The angel's arrow, pointed at her heart; the gilded stucco resembling divine light or flames; and her facial expression, somewhere between suffering and glory. This is what Fire Sermon reminded me of and the fact that this novel was Jamie Quatro's debut is mind-blowing. While the structure of the novel, with its hopping back and forth in time and its use of different writing forms, is at times a little confusing, the strong emotion keeps the reader utterly gripped. The way Quatro also interrogates Maggie's womanhood, to what extend she uses her role as mother and wife, coated in religious guilt, as shields to hide behind, as ways to ensure her surroundings fit what she wants, was incredibly sharp. It won't necessarily work for every reader, but it made me reconsider my own stances as well. Its fragmented writing means you have to dedicate yourself to it, but once you find the novel's rhythm, Fire Sermon will consume you.

Fire Sermon really had a grip on my mind for these past few days. The way Quatro manages to strike a balance between theological debates and sensual emotion is astounding and I've already got my eye out for more books by her.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

This novel details Maggie's relationships with her husband, Thomas, and with poet James. The parts I liked best were about the reading of books.

Although this was not the type of novel I'm generally drawn to, I really was gripped by this novel. It wasn't just the narrative arc that I found so engrossing, but the writing of Jamie Quatro that I found interesting and compelling too. I raced through it and found this compelling portrait of Maggie's affair sensitively and realistically drawn. The fact that it is written in many diverse forms also made it a compelling and intricate read which drew me in and made me think hard about the way that the human heart is a stranger place than we often imagine. A good read that I will be recommending.

Maggie is devoted to her husband, Thomas, and their two children, and to God. But, after striking up a friendship with James, a poet she admires, who, unlike her husband, shares her faith, she is drawn into an affair. As the novel jumps around in time, the relationship between Maggie and James becomes more and more inevitable, even as they try to deny it and stay true to their faith. 

There are hundreds of books about affairs, but the religious element adds something else; through letters to James and conversations with an assumed therapist (but, could also be God...), Maggie struggles with her desires which she sees in turn as in opposition to her faith, and as an inexorable part of it. What seems at first to be the standard pre-marital affair (if such a thing exists) becomes so much more complicated as the layers of Maggie's marriage are peeled back (Thomas is not the good father and loving husband that he seems) and the intimacy with James grows. 

At times the religious and intellectual expositions that Maggie and James indulge in together were a little out of my reach, but this was a beautiful, frustrating, thought-provoking read.

This title was rather kindly sent to me by the publishers, Pan Macmillan/Picador. This review has also been published to my blog, GoodReads, LinkedIn, and all my social media accounts.

Fire Sermon is not a love story. It is not a tale of adultery, or a novel about lust or passion. It is a novel about Love with a capital L, about its nature and many expressions, and about a woman's desperate longing for that all-encompassing love,  for beauty, and for a coherent and cohesive life.

Maggie, an academic doing research in Theology, was brought up within a traditional, closed-mind evangelical church. Her religion, her faith and its teaching are of paramount importance for her, expressed not just in the principles for a virtuous life that she observes for most of her life, but also in her love of God.

As all good, observant Christian girls brought up in strict churches, at twenty-two Maggie marries the first young man she goes out and has sex with, Thomas. As should a choice of life partner be for any good Christian girl from a good, Christian, quite affluent middle-class family, steeped in the principle that the accumulation of money is a sign of God's favour, Thomas is already shining in his financial career. His prospects are excellent, and Maggie's family is very proud of her choice of partner.

In the first few years of their marriage,  Maggie and Thomas have two children, both problematic -- and traumatic -- deliveries. Maggie dotes on them, as she dotes on Matthew, as she does on her family and on the concept itself of a Christian family. Thomas is not a believer, but as they move away from Maggie's family and settle down on their own, she draws him into her new church. Twenty years go by.

Through her love of poetry and the beauty, peace and balance it seems to bring to her, she meets James, a poet she admires. Their first meeting is in July 2014, at an academic conference in her hometown, Nashville. Maggie and James correspond for two years, until they meet again, twice, at other conferences: once in New York in September 2016, and the third and last time in Chicago in April 2017. It is at this last meeting that Maggie and James sleep together. James has left his wife by then; it is never said in the novel that he did so because of Maggie, but it quite apparent in everything that is said that James is as in love with Maggie as Maggie is with him, a love that is not just the fire of sexual passion they succumb to in Chicago, but the communion of minds they have maintained during all those years of corresponding with one another. It is in Chicago, too, that Maggie decides to break up all contact with James.

Her faith and religious teachings now visibly shaken and repeatedly questioned and analysed, instead of burning in what she chooses to see as merely her and James' lust, and whereas James choice is, contrary to Maggie's, of ending a marriage where there is no longer any love and communion, Maggie chooses to burn in the living out of her previous choices: James, her marriage to him, her family by him, their life.

In Fire Sermon, Jamie Quatro successfully explores several of the traditional sermon types, including that of sermon as conversation. Thus Maggie is depicted pouring her soul out and writing it all down in her journal: all the letters she will never send to James, and which resemble more the conversations she might have had with him if he was there with her; her conversations with a third person, where she debates her actions and her beliefs; what values and precepts are embodied by her faith and religious teachings; and her own feelings, observations and perceptions of what she is going through and where she intends to take herself, tracing her path towards complete detachment from the senses as a means to achieve the balance, serenity and the coherence she desires. Maggie flows from one type of sermon to the other, one element of the sermon as form to the other: she goes from exposition of her values and of her deviation from them, and her guilt for her actions, to exhorting herself to a life of complete commitment to her values,  and finally to the practical application of those values, in the pursuit of the path Maggie has drawn for herself.

Structurally, this is one of those books where the form is of paramount importance to, and heavily influences, the story being told. Given the weight of religion and religious observance in the story, structuring it as a sermon (which is, as defined in Wikipedia, "an oration, lecture, or talk by a member of a religious institution or clergy [which addresses] a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behaviour within both past and present contexts) is not only the logical choice, but the structure that presents itself as the most appropriate for this novel.

In her narrative process, Maggie explores the various traditions, styles and functions of the sermon. As her sermon is delivered to us in an impromptu but extemporaneous fashion, mirroring two of the traditional styles of sermon delivery, with her journal entries being unplanned and quite spontaneous but bearing behind her narrative all the weight of her religious upbringing and her Theology scholarship, Maggie is established, first and foremost, as an academic, a Theology scholar, and as a firm believer and practising Christian: sermons are indeed part of her upbringing, and of her academic research. Moreover, her faith appears as unshakable. She is presented to us as the embodiment of a trustworthy narrator.

But there is something else there. Something insidious and dark, almost sinister, which insists on remaining there in spite of Faith, in spite of any religious convictions, Maggie's or our owns.  In spite of it being a sermon, and in spite of (or because of?) the 'sermon' as either form or vehicle. It is the function of a sermon to extoll the virtues of faith, and to exhort the faithful to the acceptance of dogma and the practice of their faith. Accordingly, all throughout her 'fire sermon', Maggie seems to feel a seemingly unacknowledged need to keep extolling her husband's virtues and worth, and the place and meaning he has in her life. Thus she keeps asserting, over and over throughout her sermon, that he is 'a good man', while we are otherwise allowed to glimpse that he is not so. But she needs to tell herself that he is, repeatedly, the words becoming narrative and the narrative becoming incontrovertible truth, the substance of reality -- and such is, in fact, the nature of dogma itself.

Maybe she does so because that is the only way she can exhort herself to stay with Thomas, to leave James, to forget her folly of longing for human love over its divine form; or maybe because she needs to use that mistaken choice of her youth as the narrative she can continuously flagellate herself with.

It is for the reader to make the necessary inferences, discern the implications and the hidden relationships of things, as we put together the puzzle of form and style, the sermon Maggie delivers to herself and the poetic language she uses, the facts she narrates, the feelings she discloses. We see the story through Maggie's eyes, read the sermon that explores, in a most intimate way, her innermost being, her suffering and her longings, her determined path towards illumination; she is presented, from the beginning, as a trustworthy narrator, as she unveils herself and her prevarications before our eyes. We have absolutely no reason to doubt her, what she knows, her perceptions, her analysis.

Writing her novel in the form of a sermon, Jamie Quatro borrowed her title from the Ādittapariyāya Sutta, most commonly known as "Fire Sermon", where Buddha's preaches detachment from the senses, and describes all internal and external senses and perceptions, all resultant mental phenomena and consciousness as "burning": burning with passion, with aversion, with delusion and with suffering. It is only through this burning that one can become disenchanted and detached from the senses, and consequently achieve spiritual elevation. Ultimately, it is with this process of "burning" that Quatro's Fire Sermon is concerned.

And burning Maggie does. She burns in her passion and love for James. She burns in her sexual aversion for a man whose first sexual act with her was one of violence, a man who turns violent and forces himself on her every time she denies him sex, a man for whom she never felt any sexual attraction or intellectual affinity. She burns, because it was her choice, and she has to go through with it: the man she chose to marry, the life she chose to build. She burns with suffering, because she tried to burn her passion and lust for James by having sex with him, as if doing it once would definitely close the issue and bolt the door for her temptation, but it turns out that it wasn't just lust after all, but "the real deal", a love more real than anything she had ever experienced before, a love where minds and bodies are in perfect synchronicity, completely attuned. She burns in her self-imposed deprivation of James and all that James means and embodies. On her deprivation of love with a capital L, if such love can ever belong between a man and a woman in the eyes of the church. She burns in the guilt of her adulterous act. She burns in the delusion of her perfect husband, of her perfect marriage; her delusion of marital duty; the delusion of her Christian duty to salvage her marriage. She burns in her longing for what she doesn't seem to be able to achieve: beauty, peace and serenity, sexual fulfilment, an untainted proximity with God, a life coherent with all the teachings and tenets of her religion. And Maggie burns in suffering, for all she loses as she loses James, as she loses her chosen path, as she loses herself. She burns in her Faith, and in her questioning of that same faith, of the validity of its precepts, of her choices, of her path.

Therefore, Maggie and Thomas carry on living together as husband and wife; having marital sex, Thomas now in full knowledge of Maggie's feelings for another man and lack of sexual attraction for him, Maggie choosing, despite her aversion, to placate him and avoid any more violence, any more of Thomas accesses of fury and forced sex.

No one ever knows about Maggie's burning -- except herself. With the years, a great part of Maggie's fire finally starts to subside. James is consigned to the realm of memory, all the what-could-have-been and the what-ifs relegated to the realm of fantasy. He observes their Chicago agreement and never tries to contact Maggie. In the end, Maggie begins to wonder whether he had loved her as much as she had loved him, but the fact is that, despite the intensity and pain of her love, she too never quite contacted him after Chicago. He writes his memoirs, and Maggie abstains from -- she avoids -- reading them, even though she wonders whether she figures in there somewhere: she does not want to find out, preferring to bask -- burn? -- in her memory -- and her fantasy? -- of a perfect, eternal love.

With the years, too, Thomas' fire seems to slowly start to burn out, and he seemingly learns to become more accommodating, more compromising, more understanding maybe. He puts an end to his sexual aggression. Maggie too accommodates, compromises. They salvage their marriage, their family. They observe the precepts of their religion and salvage their life commitment, albeit in detriment of love and of life's essence and real truth: what appears over what is, because, in the end, the teachings they believe in are that the material, the touchable, the sensible, the whatness of things is not what is, it is not the essence, it is not the truth. Following from Plato and Aristotle, and their theories of being and essence, and ending up in a full circle, the truth of anything, the essence, it belongs only to the realm of the spiritual, of God. The realm of the form, from which all other things are copied, and which alone gives meaning to being, to life itself.

the verdict:

An amazing and amazingly beautiful read. The rhythm and poetry of the language will leave you quite breathless at times. And the storyline will break your heart. It is not a love story, as much as a deep reflexion on the nature of love itself, and the many kinds and expressions love can come under, from the most physical and visceral to the most platonic, most spiritual: the love of and within the family, the love of God and the church, the love between a man and a woman, the love embodied in a complete communion of minds. The love of self. The act of love that constitutes Faith.

Fire Sermon is a book about Love. But mostly it is a book about longing, to once more quote Garth Greenwell. It is a longing that comes from deep within the soul, from deep within a being: the longing "for beauty, for sex, for God, for a coherent life” which, in the end, and irrespective of how much our faith might weigh in our life, is what we all long for: complete fulfillment, aesthetically, emotionally, physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

“At least three times a month, the pastor continued, an unhappy spouse would come to his office and say, This marriage can’t be God’s will for me. God wants me to be happy.
And the pastor would say, Show me where it says that in the Bible.”
Maggie, a writer and practising Christian enjoys an intellectual correspondence and, finally, one solitary night of passion in Chicago with James, a poet, after which they agree never to meet again.
The book sounds slight, and yet the subject matter is massive. In a narrative that sweeps and dips round the timelines, taking in confessions, letters sent and unsent, emails, Socratic dialogues, Jamie Quatro explores love, faith and fidelity.
Her husband, Tom, is described as a “good husband”, (we never hear his point of view) though he seems something of a sexual bully, taking three goes, it seems to work out that his wife is simply not interested in vibrators. Likewise James’s wife Beth, “warm and witty and smart… but … funny about meeting my writer friends” (no kidding) doesn’t get a say.
Beautifully written, this book is a far better evocation of a marriage, its joys, frustrations and accommodations than, say, Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer.

If you are a person who enjoys reading about relationships and marriages along the same lines as Revolutionary Road by Richard Yate's I think you will love this. At times, this nonlinear narrative takes a little deeper concentration as it jumps from journal entries, to emails to counselling sessions but the work is worth it.

We follow Maggie as she divulges the most intimate details of her life and the incidents that happen between her and her husband, her lover and her children. At times tender and at others heartbreakingly honest, Quatro makes you want to look away as you feel you may be eavesdropping on someone's most private moments and conversations.

A must-read for those who enjoy novels that consider marriage, religion, philosophy and the impacts these have on us and what happens if we meet someone who is prepared to listen to our deepest most hidden thoughts on these subjects.

Jamie Quatro has written a moving and beautiful novel in The Fire Sermon. Unlike other stories that tell the story of illicit love or desire, this novel explores the subject using philosophy (I loved the appearances of Maggie Nelson and beyond) and theology. When Maggie has an affair, she is burdened not just with guilt for betraying her husband and children, but for turning away from her God. Quatro' writing is beautifully paced; it never hurries over the complexities of human emotion.

At times it feels a little too philosophically indulgent as Maggie and her lover James have intricate conversations analysing theology, poetry and philosophy. Although this is mostly a subtle and wonderful way of understanding the internal lives of the characters, occasionally it feels a little forced and can stint the flow of the novel.

I had never read any of Quatro's novels and will certainly be visiting her backlist!

This is a book about the lifelong marriage between Maggie and Thomas. Maggie is an academic who gives up her studies to bring up their two children whilst Thomas works in a city job. The book explores the tensions at the heart of the marriage driven by Maggie's passionate affair with James, a poet. Maggie also has a complex relationship with her Christian faith and there are several deep theological conversations between her and James about the nature of (and contradictions at the heart of) the Christian faith.

The book jumps around in time and is told from multiple viewpoints - letters and emails from Maggie to James, Maggie's conversations with God and with an unknown person (her therapist?). It's initially difficult to place yourself within the different time periods / narrative modes but the prose is wonderful throughout and the various strands slowly start to tie together.

I loved this book and am moving straight on to her story collection!

'I admit that unless something is forbidden I cannot want it with any intensity. I admit that unless something is forbidden I can't fucking feel anything.'

Sweet Jesus, what a writer.

I loved this. The language is gorgeous, it’s smart and intense and short. And the main character, Maggie, is a mess. I also love that she is reading Bluets in the first part of the novel, and she calls Maggie Nelson, 'the blue author'.

Life, living, love, desire, devotion, morality, god - it’s all there. Especially how destructive desire can be and how we willingly tear apart our well-made worlds to touch its edges.

I found this a challenging book to read with the changing timelines and discussion of God's love and human love woven together in the narrative of an extra marital affair. At times I thought it was really well written and others I found the writing average and bland. I would've given 3.5 if possible but have gone lower because on balance there were probably more parts i didn't like.. However, it is a really interesting and different first novel and I look forward to future work by Ms Quatro

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.

Maggie marries her first serious boyfriend and settles into typical married life with the requisite two children and a comfortable middle class existence. An academic theologian Maggie is as devoted to God as she is to Thomas and her children.

When she begins writing to James, a poet they begin an illicit affair. As the children grow older so does the intensity of their letter writing and although they only meet on a handful of occasions their meetings are erotically charged. As she shirks the sexual advances of her husband and fights her feeling for James, Maggie must confront not only her devotion to Thomas but her devotion to God and her faith.

Fire Sermon is not your normal story of marital strife and an illicit affair. Its uniqueness is in the way it is written via letters, Maggie's sessions with her therapist and a series of flashbacks to her past life.

Yet, it also pits theology and faith against wants and desires. As Maggie's feelings towards James grow so does the guilt that she feels not only to her husband but also to her faith and her strong belief in God. She constantly wrestles with the need or perhaps duty to confess her sins, to absolve herself and feel whole again. Yes, she loves Thomas and is devoted to him, but does the pure physical joy and desire she feels with James warrant leaving her family?

I did get a little frustrated with Maggie and her dilemmas at times but this was perhaps the aim of the novelist, to provoke a reaction and to question what we would do in the same situation.

Quatro's writing is sparse but extremely eloquent and thought provoking. I found the latter part of the novel particularly emotional and tender.

It is not an easy novel to read and will not be to everyone's taste. I didn't form an opinion straight away and put the novel to one side to think about it before I could really appreciate the quality of the writing and its contents and write a review.

It is a very assured debut and I am looking forward to see what Quatro will write next

Thank you to Picador and Alice May Dewing for a proof copy to read and review.