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A review by book_beat
A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote
5.0
This is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read — and feels like an annual “must read” for the Christmas season.
“‘You know what I’ve always thought?’ she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. ‘I’ve always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don’t know it’s getting dark. And it’s been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I’ll wager it never happens. I’ll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are’ — her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone — ‘just what they’ve always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”
“‘You know what I’ve always thought?’ she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. ‘I’ve always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don’t know it’s getting dark. And it’s been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I’ll wager it never happens. I’ll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are’ — her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone — ‘just what they’ve always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”