Bits and Pieces — Chris Lewis Gibson

“The Orthodox celebrate this more than Catholics. Certainly more than Protestants. In the West we like bright lights and answers. At Epiphany we discover, and what it is we discover we are not entirely sure. The Wisemen see the baby in Mary's arms, but what it all means…. Who can really say?” The center of Brendan's story is his experience at the first Christmas party. The evening he and Sheridan have is, in some way, the crux of the whole book and the center to all the other strange events that happen. It is dreamlike, but it is also lifelike. We wish to judge life, to give it morals, to declare many experiences good or bad and ourselves good and bad based on them. While there are many things which are good and bad, many of our experiences, especially the way we experience ourselves sexually, are simply happenings which we are not entirely sure how to describe. Much of our life, in love and in religion, is defined by mystery and disconcertment, not moral and solution. This new novel is different from the other books. For this very reason, the reason of mystery, this novel is an unfinished story of sorts. Not all questions are answered and certainly all bows are not tied up. This may mean there are more stories to come, but what comes after will not be like what came before, and if that means anything it means that neither Brendan Miller nor myself will type in bold print the six letters which make up the phrase, “The End.”