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A review by desirosie
All the Living by C.E. Morgan
4.0
It is hard to say that I "enjoyed" this book, because it was so heavy; so fraught with sadness. (I'm relieved it was a relatively short book; I could not have borne it if it was a tome.) Nevertheless, it was exceptionally well-written and well-done.
Of particular interest to me was the nature of grief(s) -- Orren's is recent, fresh, and brutal and it has fundamentally changed him; he has no lightness, no relief, but he is determined. Aloma's grief is so long ago, she denies it, and its conceivable, when she says it does not bear upon her that she speaks the truth as she can know it, but it is there in her longing, her anger, and in her indecisiveness.
One thing that struck me was the isolation of the story in relation to time and geography, and it reminded me of McCarthy's "Outer Darkness" (which I forgot to track and was completely and totally bonkers). The "outside world" exists only in a nominal fashion (Orren has been to Lexington and Aloma dreams of playing the piano somewhere "out East") and Aloma in particular is hemmed in by the mountains and their narrow spaces. We are given some clues as to the time, but it leaves us guessing, and I would not be surprised if I were told it was much more contemporary than it seems. I have spent some time in places like this in rural Kentucky/SW Virginia/Tennessee and rural Kentucky is where my mother's people were from (for close to 200 years). It was a world apart for a very long time.
I don't know how to feel about the ending...it was the type of ending where I wanted it to be different; I wanted everyone to make different choices, but I also knew, when I turned the last page, that they *couldn't* make any other choices; it had to be that way.
Of particular interest to me was the nature of grief(s) -- Orren's is recent, fresh, and brutal and it has fundamentally changed him; he has no lightness, no relief, but he is determined. Aloma's grief is so long ago, she denies it, and its conceivable, when she says it does not bear upon her that she speaks the truth as she can know it, but it is there in her longing, her anger, and in her indecisiveness.
One thing that struck me was the isolation of the story in relation to time and geography, and it reminded me of McCarthy's "Outer Darkness" (which I forgot to track and was completely and totally bonkers). The "outside world" exists only in a nominal fashion (Orren has been to Lexington and Aloma dreams of playing the piano somewhere "out East") and Aloma in particular is hemmed in by the mountains and their narrow spaces. We are given some clues as to the time, but it leaves us guessing, and I would not be surprised if I were told it was much more contemporary than it seems. I have spent some time in places like this in rural Kentucky/SW Virginia/Tennessee and rural Kentucky is where my mother's people were from (for close to 200 years). It was a world apart for a very long time.
I don't know how to feel about the ending...it was the type of ending where I wanted it to be different; I wanted everyone to make different choices, but I also knew, when I turned the last page, that they *couldn't* make any other choices; it had to be that way.