Exploring Small-Town Grief: A Review of Lord the One You Love Is Sick by Kasey Thornton
Thornton, Kasey. Lord the One You Love Is Sick.
Ig Publishing, 2020.
Paperback, 228 pp. $16.95
Lord The One You Love Is Sick by Kasey Thornton is a wonderfully written collection of shorts that follows a small-town community reeling from the tragic drug overdose of one of its members. The book is set in North Carolina, which is coincidentally my home state, and the realistic portrayal of the small-town community grounds and establishes the setting. This is Thornton’s debut collection, featuring chapters told from the perspectives of different individuals which each feel distinct and real in their own ways. Kasey Thornton writes about grief and trauma in such a gripping way that, although shocking at times, is respectful and captivating. Lord The One You Love Is Sick contains difficult subject matter, including incest and sexual abuse, animal abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, mental health issues, and drug addiction. However, Thornton writes these passages with grace, and I never felt the book failed to handle these sensitive topics in anything but the most respectful way. Nothing felt trivializing or non-empathetic, and the characters demonstrate their own resilience as they continue their lives.
The atmosphere is tangible in this book, at times feeling like a character all its own. The townsfolk seem to react to it, commenting on what they think is going on or what they believe to be true about other characters. Frequently they are wrong, and gossip spreads amongst the community, resulting in several different “truths” existing at once. This adds to Thornton’s expertly crafted sense of reality. At a few key points, mostly in the second half of the book, important events unfold in the background. Characters who the reader is invested in perform actions and make decisions that are important for their lives, but the reader is not there to witness. This left me wanting a bit more from the stories, but I never found that detracted from the overall quality of the collection. The reader is left to imagine these events as they piece together what happened in the subsequent chapters.
Readers of Southern literary fiction are sure to embrace the healing power of this collection. Each section left me thinking, whether that be reflecting upon my own life or the lives of others, considering the characters themselves, or piecing together some element of the town or plot that was not overtly stated. Thornton’s prose is beautiful while not being pretentious, efficient while remaining thought provoking, comedic at times, tragic at others. This collection’s portrayal of the healing process unfolding for both an individual and a larger community makes it particularly compelling. In an era when traumatic events seem to unfold almost daily, Thornton’s compassionate yet unflinching portrayal feels especially welcome, demonstrating to readers the importance of healing together during turbulent times.
