|
Book Review. What We Wish Were True
By Tallu Schuyler Quinn
About a quarter of the way through Tallu Quinn’s book I began losing interest and considered putting it aside. I’m glad I didn’t. This is a story about being in love with life, a life story shared through many small vignettes about Quinn’s early family life, going through seminary, managing simple math, founding the Nashville Food Project, making discoveries during a mission trip to Nicaragua, and times spent with family and friends. Each brief episode is only 3-4 pages long, yet each makes poignant statements about joy and grief, sometimes together. Her story was written after contracting Glioblastoma, a brain cancer, at age 40 in 2020. Here are two excerpts from Living with a Body.
“There is such a deep loneliness in being really sick. The companionship of the divine is profound. But the late nights alone, the foggy confusion, the constant flow of people in and out – it is isolating.”
“I honestly feel most connected in love about our sad reality when I can just hold [my children] and not have a long conversation. Something about the feel [of them] in my lap, or their hands in mine, feels the most connecting and thus healing.”
Tallu Schuyler Quinn died this past February at age 42. Her book was released in April, and it will soon be added to our library.
Reviewed by Ronald Yarger
The display cart outside our church library has additional suggestions, plus instructions about borrowing books. You can view the entire CUMC Library holdings at http://www.chathamumc.com/cumc-library/.
| 
