christine_sunderland's review
4.0
One of the greatest fallacies today is the denial of history and tradition in an effort to recreate ourselves. For in denying history, we deny God. In Deb Elkink's debut novel, The Third Grace, this theme runs through a well-crafted story.
In this coming-of-age plot, Mary Grace, seventeen, seeks to find herself by redefining herself, leaving her past behind. She falls in love with Francois, a high school exchange student, because of his image, not his true character. After this unforgettable summer, and Francois is longer in her life, she leaves her rural Nebraska roots for the big city of Denver. She desires sophistication, replacing humble faith with proud doubt. Francois renamed her Aglaia, after the goddess of beauty in Greek mythology, and she gladly keeps the new name.
No longer Mary Grace, she pursues her career in costume design as Aglaia, designing costumes as she tries on her new persona, or seeks to do so. She uses old-world skills - thread and needle - to gain entry into the brave new world of theater and university and film.
Through the elderly character of Ebenezer we watch the battle in Aglaia, and it is through Ebenezer that the authorial voice is largely heard. He is a man of faith and tradition, a man who believes in God and Scripture, who knows the difference between illusion and reality, lies and truth, as well as the role of art and the purposes of education. He is our wise man.
These are large subjects, and Deb Elkink weaves them into the fabric of her story, counterpointing flashbacks to that pivotal summer on the farm and Aglaia's growing relationship with the local university in Denver. From the university enters our third point-of-view, that of the nihilistic professor Lou, and we see the cynicism and greed of a life without divine guidance. We consider the nature of art and the role of academia. As a farm girl in the big city, Aglaia is tempted by the liberal gnosis of academia that Lou embodies, and this too is well-drawn by the author. It is a world tempted by itself, like the snake devouring its own tail. We see sexual temptations, worldly temptations, temptations simply of self-pride and self-destruction.
Aglaia must of course face this conflict in her soul and must choose who and what she is, and more importantly, how to go about making these choices, what authority to call upon. She takes a Bible on her business trip to Paris and it is this book of Scriptures that weaves in and out of the story as though it were a character in its own right, a character from her past that she can't quite abandon.
Ms. Elkink has created a huge canvas in few pages, a novel rich in word and image. We hear renderings of tradition versus modernity: "You are what you read" (76) and "The moment one idolized the method, one lost the message." (77) What do we idolize? Should we? Why?
While the author's word choice and phrasing can at times be too rich, too dense, I appreciate her brilliance, knowing that trapping the right detail isn't easy:
"She dipped into her bag to hook out her sketchpad and, with a few deft strokes of her graphite, captured the swing of the violinist's skirt, the strain at the sleeve seam as the girl propelled her bow across willing strings." (135)
Ms. Elkink's depiction of the great rural landscape of Nebraska, a place I do not personally know, gave me a beatific glimpse of the natural world:
"By Aglaia's watch, it was eleven o'clock on Sunday morning and already sheets of heat undulated over the standing grain. The wind swept the crop like a hand brushing velvet, swatted the clouds and a flock of skittering sparrows across the sky." (218)
And her depiction of a tornado:
"They spy a twister backlit by flashes forming in the roiling clouds, and ... they watch in awe a funnel dipping and lifting, a dark finger stirring the blacker fields before closing up into the fist of the sky... "(229)
The settings are intriguing as the reader journeys from Mennonite farmlands to Denver, and on to Paris: Paris, that city of light (or is it dark?), that city of art (or of illusion?), city of romance (or heartbreak?). What is real and what is illusionary? What is art and what is faith? Why does our culture worship art, as we lose our faith? And, perhaps, even, why are there rules of behavior that our mothers and fathers have tried to teach us? Rules their mothers and fathers taught them? Does the past speak to us, and should we be listening? These are some of the questions considered in The Third Grace.
While this novel does not portray the sacramental life known to the Catholic world, there are compelling moral themes of redemption and sacrificial love. And we see the power of Scripture and prayer through Ebenezer and Aglaia's childhood friend Naomi. The themes of The Third Grace revolve around tradition and family, morality and Scripture, rather than the Church itself, and it is from these islands of stability that we enter the myths propagated by art and academia. Aglaia and the pagan world meets Mary Grace and the Christian world. And the name Mary Grace naturally echoes Hail Mary, full of grace... Such echoes breathe in the pages, singing almost silently.
The Third Grace is a beautiful rendering of a difficult and unpopular subject, the questioning of the roles of academia and art, and the need for a resurgence of Christian faith. "Aglaia" is the third "Grace" in the sculpture, "The Three Graces," by James Pradier (1831), a subject celebrated by artists since the Renaissance. Since that fifteenth-century rebirth of the pagan world - the Renaissance - man has searched for substitutes for the religious impulse, the desire for God, and art has been one of the answers. Another has been the celebration of beauty itself. A third, the embrace of self at the cost of love. Our culture continues this search for God-substitutes at great cost, denying our true nature as children of God.
Thank you, Deb Elkink, for reminding us what is real and what is not.
Christine Sunderland, author of Pilgrimage, Offerings, Inheritance, and Hana-lani(all OakTara Publishers)
(This review first appeared on CatholicFiction.net.)
In this coming-of-age plot, Mary Grace, seventeen, seeks to find herself by redefining herself, leaving her past behind. She falls in love with Francois, a high school exchange student, because of his image, not his true character. After this unforgettable summer, and Francois is longer in her life, she leaves her rural Nebraska roots for the big city of Denver. She desires sophistication, replacing humble faith with proud doubt. Francois renamed her Aglaia, after the goddess of beauty in Greek mythology, and she gladly keeps the new name.
No longer Mary Grace, she pursues her career in costume design as Aglaia, designing costumes as she tries on her new persona, or seeks to do so. She uses old-world skills - thread and needle - to gain entry into the brave new world of theater and university and film.
Through the elderly character of Ebenezer we watch the battle in Aglaia, and it is through Ebenezer that the authorial voice is largely heard. He is a man of faith and tradition, a man who believes in God and Scripture, who knows the difference between illusion and reality, lies and truth, as well as the role of art and the purposes of education. He is our wise man.
These are large subjects, and Deb Elkink weaves them into the fabric of her story, counterpointing flashbacks to that pivotal summer on the farm and Aglaia's growing relationship with the local university in Denver. From the university enters our third point-of-view, that of the nihilistic professor Lou, and we see the cynicism and greed of a life without divine guidance. We consider the nature of art and the role of academia. As a farm girl in the big city, Aglaia is tempted by the liberal gnosis of academia that Lou embodies, and this too is well-drawn by the author. It is a world tempted by itself, like the snake devouring its own tail. We see sexual temptations, worldly temptations, temptations simply of self-pride and self-destruction.
Aglaia must of course face this conflict in her soul and must choose who and what she is, and more importantly, how to go about making these choices, what authority to call upon. She takes a Bible on her business trip to Paris and it is this book of Scriptures that weaves in and out of the story as though it were a character in its own right, a character from her past that she can't quite abandon.
Ms. Elkink has created a huge canvas in few pages, a novel rich in word and image. We hear renderings of tradition versus modernity: "You are what you read" (76) and "The moment one idolized the method, one lost the message." (77) What do we idolize? Should we? Why?
While the author's word choice and phrasing can at times be too rich, too dense, I appreciate her brilliance, knowing that trapping the right detail isn't easy:
"She dipped into her bag to hook out her sketchpad and, with a few deft strokes of her graphite, captured the swing of the violinist's skirt, the strain at the sleeve seam as the girl propelled her bow across willing strings." (135)
Ms. Elkink's depiction of the great rural landscape of Nebraska, a place I do not personally know, gave me a beatific glimpse of the natural world:
"By Aglaia's watch, it was eleven o'clock on Sunday morning and already sheets of heat undulated over the standing grain. The wind swept the crop like a hand brushing velvet, swatted the clouds and a flock of skittering sparrows across the sky." (218)
And her depiction of a tornado:
"They spy a twister backlit by flashes forming in the roiling clouds, and ... they watch in awe a funnel dipping and lifting, a dark finger stirring the blacker fields before closing up into the fist of the sky... "(229)
The settings are intriguing as the reader journeys from Mennonite farmlands to Denver, and on to Paris: Paris, that city of light (or is it dark?), that city of art (or of illusion?), city of romance (or heartbreak?). What is real and what is illusionary? What is art and what is faith? Why does our culture worship art, as we lose our faith? And, perhaps, even, why are there rules of behavior that our mothers and fathers have tried to teach us? Rules their mothers and fathers taught them? Does the past speak to us, and should we be listening? These are some of the questions considered in The Third Grace.
While this novel does not portray the sacramental life known to the Catholic world, there are compelling moral themes of redemption and sacrificial love. And we see the power of Scripture and prayer through Ebenezer and Aglaia's childhood friend Naomi. The themes of The Third Grace revolve around tradition and family, morality and Scripture, rather than the Church itself, and it is from these islands of stability that we enter the myths propagated by art and academia. Aglaia and the pagan world meets Mary Grace and the Christian world. And the name Mary Grace naturally echoes Hail Mary, full of grace... Such echoes breathe in the pages, singing almost silently.
The Third Grace is a beautiful rendering of a difficult and unpopular subject, the questioning of the roles of academia and art, and the need for a resurgence of Christian faith. "Aglaia" is the third "Grace" in the sculpture, "The Three Graces," by James Pradier (1831), a subject celebrated by artists since the Renaissance. Since that fifteenth-century rebirth of the pagan world - the Renaissance - man has searched for substitutes for the religious impulse, the desire for God, and art has been one of the answers. Another has been the celebration of beauty itself. A third, the embrace of self at the cost of love. Our culture continues this search for God-substitutes at great cost, denying our true nature as children of God.
Thank you, Deb Elkink, for reminding us what is real and what is not.
Christine Sunderland, author of Pilgrimage, Offerings, Inheritance, and Hana-lani(all OakTara Publishers)
(This review first appeared on CatholicFiction.net.)
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