The Ninth Hour

 

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A beautifully observed story about saving and losing your soul. What sins are unpardonable? And believing there are things you can do are beyond forgiveness, why or for whom would you commit them? If love is laying down one's life for someone, what does it mean when they lose their soul for you? McDermott writes so subtly you never see the twist coming that ties all the pieces together into a whole. One of my favorite authors, for sure.

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There was still the smell of smoke but the smell of cleaning ammonia was now cut into it--the smell of the day going on.

"Down here, we do our best to transform what is ugly, soiled, stained, don't we?  We send it back into the world like a resurrected soul."

A woman's life is a blood sacrifice.

"If we could live without suffering," Sister Lucy said, "we'd find no peace in heaven."

Truth reveals itself.  It's really quite amazing.  God wants us to know the truth of all things, she said, big or small, because that's how we'll know Him.