Review by Carla Panciera
In the latter pages of award-winning author Laurette Folk’s newest novel Eleison, a young priest struggling with his vows declares, “‘I often think of what Augustine said, how the disorder of the soul is its own punishment.’” (99) In these pages, Folk examines her characters according to, if not their disorders, then certainly the thoughts and behaviors that haunt them. What ensues is an exploration of what it means to be a flawed (and thus very human) being who seeks the kind of mercy one might expect to find in a book so titled.
Folk’s story is told via the voices of several characters, most of whom revolve around the patriarch, Dante Alighieri Russo, a man we meet on his deathbed which serves as an inferno where he relives the sins and omissions of his life. Dante battled mightily with the kind of faith his wife Florence displayed: “He was wary of the priests, men who forsook women for God, and he found the Sunday masses dull, impersonal, and rigid.” (10) Thus, his confessional becomes the mirror in his Italian baroque bedroom which “[has]collected dust between the reflective layer and the glass, and it looked . . . as if his reflection was in the clouds, ethereal and unworldly,” a fitting “portal to the past and a means to reconcile with certain troubling aspects of his life.” He has been, especially by the metrics of his generation, a good husband and a father, which doesn’t mean he has been perfect in either role.
Dante served his country in World War II and married the first woman he loved. He was a stern father but a highly responsible one. By comparison, his children see his dreams as so much less than their own. In his final moments on earth, he reflects not only upon his marriage to the pious Florence, but also upon his children: Bartholomew (“Bardo”), a psychologist who cut his teeth analyzing his father and their often difficult relationship, Nicoletta whose own life is a struggle, and Carmen, the only one of of his children who inherited his practicality, competency, and problem-solving—but, of course, her role is minor here. Dante’s perceived disappointments and they way they might have had an impact on his more troubled children are much more interesting for his survivors to focus on.
Nicoletta is among Dante’s “devoted.” In the midst of a divorce, she discovers she’s pregnant. Now, a single mother, her dreams are much like the novel itself: full of allusions to both Christianity and Greek tragedy, and, according to Bardo, who studied Freud, evidence of repressed desires. Nicoletta is riddled with anxiety based in part on her inability to discover her own purpose. At a cafe with her young son, she thinks: “It always seemed like a good idea to get out, but then when I was out, amidst other people, I began to retreat inside myself. No, retreat is not the word—the word is drown—drown inside myself.” (16) But Nicoletta is also a strega, a clairvoyant, who, walking along the same stretch of beach that comforted her father in his latter years, meets a stranger and with whom she shares a vision. In fact, her visions offer her the ability to define herself, to finally admit, “‘I’m just a lonely woman. A terribly lonely and bored woman whose mind gets the best of her.’” (93)
Though Nicoletta’s brother, Bardo, is characterized as the present day prodigal son, he demonstrates an understanding of his father that his sisters lack: “His father was a thinker, like he was a thinker; like Bardo, he had a big brain and a little life, a relatively uneventful, typical, monotonous life, and this combination brought anxiety and angst.” (66) He can’t imagine that his father, who bailed him out of his youthful indiscretions, might actually be fulfilled by a life very different that the one Bardo envisions for himself. Perhaps this is why the young man is unable to commit to any one woman, why he views with longing the lives of others that seem more romantic, more celebratory than his own. Only when he too ventures to the shoreline his father visited does he understand that Dante made peace with his life and had, in fact, opened himself up to the world around him in a way his son struggles to. A true prodigal, he is humbled by this recognition.
Finally, Dante’s widow, Florence, takes comfort in her relationship with the new priest with whom she swaps prayers. Despite her devotion, she also welcomes the ghost of her husband who returns to pat her behind. She has been a devoted, if not passionate, wife. Her faith, more than any of the others, is sorely tested in her youth and again as a young wife. But she accepts what Dante told her when they first began dating, “that this world wasn’t fit for some souls, and that . . . it was a privilege just to love them during what short time they were here.” (125) Beyond this life with its heartbreaks, its unfulfilled promise of romance and adventure, Florence believes, is true paradise. Still, she is capable of love not just for her church, but for her family. The world, even her own children, might define her as the stereotypical wife, mother, communicant, but she is the closest character to being full realized and thus free of the burdens other characters possess.
Folk is adept at creating well-rounded, believable characters who navigate the complexities of their own lives and their connections to others. The “disorders” of their souls mimic the reader’s own. Whether or not we are guided by faith, or science, or both, what kind of mercy can we extend to ourselves and to others as we work to find peace in this life?
Eleison by Laurette Folk
Bordighera, 2025, $15.00 [paperback]
ISBN # 978-1-59954-227-0
Carla Panciera’s newest book is Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir. Her collection, Bewildered, received AWP’s 2013 Grace Paley Short Fiction Award. She has also published two collections of poetry: One of the Cimalores (Cider Press) and No Day, No Dusk, No Love (Bordighera). A third poetry collection will be published by Bordighera in November 2025. The recipient of a Mass Cultural Council Grant in prose, Carla is a retired high school English teacher from Rowley, MA.