Finished reading: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi 📚

A very refreshingly lovely novel. I confess that I stalled a couple months ago, about halfway through. As curative as its loveliness was, I admit to getting bored; it seemed for a stretch that there really wasn’t anything “happening,” which I assume, and also confess, is my own problem. But it was worth returning to. The two people who strongly recommended this book — my mother-in-law, when she gave it to my wife for Christmas, and a surgeon I work with when he returned from vacation — gestured in the same way with their hand over their heart when they did so. A few others spoke similarly of it when it was brought up. I, too, offer that gesture.

I wonder if, like newborn children, we go through our entire lives looking for a face, longing for a particular gaze that calms and fills us, that loves and welcomes us, that recognizes and runs to greet us.