152 pages
Published 2023
Read from April 29 to May 2
Rating: 4 out of 5
This is Freydís Moon’s earliest long-form work, though chronologically it was published after their Exodus 20:3, With a Vengeance, and Three Kings, all of which are on my to-read list. Heart has a touch of first-novel unevenness, a certain lack of polish that might also be correlated with its indie-press presentation. I went back and forth about how I wanted to rate this novella; even though my ratings are wholly arbitrary anyway, I couldn’t decide whether I should give it the 4 out of 5 I wanted to give it, or whether the first-book bumpy prose would bump it down to 3.5. In the end I decided I liked this story, and that’s enough.
Heart is a slim but affecting story of possession and possessiveness, of spiritual appropriation and delayed grief, of calling an exorcist (who’s rather more of a specialist, really) to help you move on from a particularly controlling past entanglement. At its best, Moon’s prose is bone-bending and blood-letting in its effectiveness (though their earnestness occasionally gets in the way of the flow). Our main characters, Colin and Bishop, are relatably scarred, layered, cautious to show their true selves. There might be a bit too much Catholicism for my tastes, but overall Heart is gorgeous and vulnerable and well worth the read.
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