Raging Desire

Maggie, a protagonist from Tennessee, a raised evangelical, married young,  the narrator of the Jamie Quatro’s novel Fire Sermon says “Imagine writing this all down and giving the manuscript to my agent. This has been done to death”. In response, her agent said, “I won’t be able to sell this”. But Maggie falls in love with a man who is not her husband – but at the same time it is an extraordinary event, and it changes everything as it is the best thing.

Quatro knows that infidelity is a tale as old as time.  Maggie and James are both writers, 45 when they consummate their affair, getting on with their busy lives, living in different American cities with their spouses and two beautiful children to fill their time allowing few opportunities to meet. They have actually been corresponding for three years since she first wrote to him an email after reading and admiring his poetry. Maggie quotes CS Lewis, “It feels almost uncivil not to wave some kind of flag in the answer. This deeply affecting account of how alone and desperate we can find ourselves whilst in an outwardly successful relationship. Can an adulterous passion develop into exquisite love?

Both Maggie and James are both deeply immersed in the Christian intellectual tradition and this brings up their initial intimacy, with the ensuing erotic attraction based in part on a romance with religion itself.

Despite Maggie’s ability to see beauty in the quotidian details of the domestic every day, she is forced to fine-tune her grasp of faith, Fidelity and forgiveness so as to reconcile the pureness of her sexual desire with her belief in God’s grace, and the realities of not wanting to leave her flawed but loving husband of 23 years. In Fire Sermon, Maggie’s Head warns her Heart about the affecting that fuels long-term partnership “ You will watch fire consume everything you care about. You will be left with ash- the proper and only end of any burning”.

 Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro, Picador £14.99/ Grove Press $24, 208 pages