Fiction: An Ex-Jesuit Who Wrote Tales of an Ironic God
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Annalisa Quinn
THE HEART IS A FULL-WILD BEAST
And Maketh Many Wild Leaps
New and Selected Stories
By John L’Heureux
After death, we live on in the memories of those we leave behind, a Jesuit priest says at the beginning of John L’Heureux’s short story “Answered Prayers.” Over the course of this cheerfully grotesque tale, it becomes clear that he was right, if not in the ways he hoped. When a drunken driver kills the priest, he can’t get over the guilt. The priest’s face appears to him all the time, but especially — inevitably, horribly — when he tries to have sex. “So this was it,” the priest thinks, called away from his eternal reward to ruin the man’s night yet again. “I’m gonna be summoned every goddamn time!” This ironic deity presides over “The Heart Is a Full-Wild Beast,” a new collection of L’Heureux’s short fiction. [More]
By Annalisa Quinn
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| Bernardo Bagulho |
And Maketh Many Wild Leaps
New and Selected Stories
By John L’Heureux
After death, we live on in the memories of those we leave behind, a Jesuit priest says at the beginning of John L’Heureux’s short story “Answered Prayers.” Over the course of this cheerfully grotesque tale, it becomes clear that he was right, if not in the ways he hoped. When a drunken driver kills the priest, he can’t get over the guilt. The priest’s face appears to him all the time, but especially — inevitably, horribly — when he tries to have sex. “So this was it,” the priest thinks, called away from his eternal reward to ruin the man’s night yet again. “I’m gonna be summoned every goddamn time!” This ironic deity presides over “The Heart Is a Full-Wild Beast,” a new collection of L’Heureux’s short fiction. [More]