book review: The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay
The backstory: The Translation of the Bones is on the 2012 Orange Prize longlist. Francesca Kay's first novel, An Equal Stillness , won the 2009 Orange New Writers Award. The basics: Set in a small Catholic church in Battersea, this novel features a priest and the three women who volunteer to clean and care for the church: Mrs. Armitage, Stella Morrison, and Mary-Margaret O'Reilly, a somewhat simple and somewhat disturbed young woman of deep faith and a questionable grip on reality. My thoughts: This novel opens with Mary-Margaret feeling a religious urge to deep clean Jesus on a cross in a side chapel. She injures herself while cleaning him and believes the statue bleeds and looks at her. Kay presented the four main characters well in the beginning, and this crucial scene, which forms the basis for the novel, leaves the reader wondering what exactly did happen to Mary-Margaret and where her reality connects with our shared reality.This scene sets the stage for many quest...