I just completed Matthew Quick’s new novel, We Are The Light (WATL), in preparation for our interview with him for our podcast, If You’ve Come This Far. You might know Matthew as the author of The Silver Linings Playbook, an excellent book made into the Oscar winning movie with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. WATL was just released on November 1st. Loved it. Matthew had me weeping! But this piece isn’t a book review, so you’ll need to read it for yourself. You can buy it here. No, this post is an excerpt from the book. Six pages in, the protagonist, Lucas, is writing a letter to his male therapist, Karl. He writes…
“Other than Darcy, no one had ever said “I love you” to me before. Not with sincerity. But then, as we spent two hours together every Friday night, I started to get better and I began to understand what you meant when you said your soul could love my soul because it’s everyone’s soul’s purpose to love, just like it’s the job of our lungs and nose to breathe; and our mouths to chew and taste; and our feet to walk. As we banked more and more Friday nights together, I started to believe that you actually did love me—not in a sexual way or even a friend way.
You loved me the way the best of a human being naturally loves the best of any and every other human being once you remove all the toxic interference.”
Boom…Drop the Mike!
