Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth

Present and populous since before the creation of the novel itself, the coming-of-age tale has been told and re-told more times and in more ways than just about any other. One of the things that makes it so compelling is the chance it offers to dip back into the naivete of childhood: to unlearn enough to see the world anew and re-asses what's true and what has merely been handed down by older hands and unquestioningly absorbed.

 

In Amy Espeseth's Sufficient Grace, fourteen year-old Ruth struggles to nourish her own curious nature in an environment of fierce religious discipline that teaches one single hegemonic truth and re-enforces it with hellfire. Ruth slowly digs into her family's past and present and soon the pious surface layers of simple morals and mantras are stripped away to reveal a skeleton lurking behind each and every member.

 

The real success of Espeseth's novel is taking these characters, their archaic ideals, unflinching stubbornness and cold rigidity, and fleshing each into sympathetic human beings. We're taken beyond their icy, robotic adherence to their creed to witness the universal human problems that engulf them. Love, lust, pride and envy: every messy emotion bubbles beneath the surface, making them truly relatable and their tale deeply compelling. [Ross McIndoe]