“The history of my mother’s religious opinions should be told as the record of a pilgrimage. As I imagine most pilgrimages, it was less the struggle towards a given end than a continual flight from disappointment and unhappiness. Neither the joys of heaven nor hell’s worst prospects provide as forceful a motive as the mere emptiness of the world.”

One of my favorite books. I read it first 20 years ago as a memoir, not a novel. Whatever it might be, it’s a wonderful book.

Ben Lerner had a nice piece on it in the New Yorker a while back.