And the Dark Sacred Night

By Julia Glass

Do you know the song ‘What a Wonderful World?' Louis Armstrong? … The list of things that prove how wonderful the world really is? I’m taken every time by this: ‘the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night.’…What I mean is that the past is like the night: dark yet sacred. It’s the time when most of us sleep so we think of the day as the time we really live, the only time that matters, because the stuff we do by day somehow makes us who we are. We feel the same way about the present. We say ‘let bygones be bygones’…water under the bridge. But there is no day without night, no wakefulness without sleep, no present without past. They are constantly somersaulting over each other.

Somehow I think this might be an encouraging read during COVID. Because if you are stuck at home right now with a small tribe of people in a world which feels dysfunctional and out of sync, the charming family in this story is sure to make you feel better. Yes, Julia Glass takes the reader, step by step, into a complicated past and shows us how it affected the present life of each character. An unexpected pregnancy. A depressed and out of work college instructor, an over-the-hill ski shop owner, an expressive music critic. A collection of people whose lives might never have intersected but for choices made by just a few.

But she also shows us how events which we try so carefully to control can come unraveled by the least little tug on a neatly secured knot. She shows us how inexplicable and unanticipated circumstances bring people together. How we navigate the past when it erupts into our present lives. And how bringing deep wounds to the surface with careful attention can bring healing.

At times, while reading this book, I would stop and exclaim “Julia! Too many people! I can’t sort it all out!” But then I’d realize that was often how I felt about my own life, my community, my extended family. Connections are made and broken, people come and go, some stay longer than others. It may feel chaotic, but eventually, everyone takes their place in the story.

If you enjoy classical music you’ll appreciate her references to chamber rehearsals, Debussy’s “Faun,” and outdoor concerts beneath the stars. If you live in New England, you’ll enjoy her PTown references, descriptions of the sea, and bone-chilling snow storms.

But mostly I enjoyed how she drew me deep into a family’s circuitous story and showed me yet another of the infinite ways we learn to make peace with our past and move forward with love and forgiveness.