The Dearly Beloved

The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall
Fiction
2019 Simon & Schuster
Finished on February 1, 2020
Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however, threaten to tear them apart.

Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily—fiercely intellectual, elegantly stern—after she tells him with certainty that she will never believe in God? And yet, how can he not?

James, the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family, spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout and beloved daughter of a minister and a debutante. James's escape from his desperate circumstances leads him to Nan and, despite his skepticism of hope in all its forms, her gentle, constant faith changes the course of his life.

The Dearly Beloved follows these two couples through decades of love and friendship, jealousy and understanding, forgiveness and commitment. Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city and the church’s congregation, these four forge improbable paths through their evolving relationships, each struggling with uncertainty, heartbreak, and joy. It's a poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage and children, and the ways we find meaning in our lives.

It took me quite a while to become interested in this character-driven novel, but once I had a firm grip on each of the four individuals and their relationships with one another, I began to better enjoy the story. And yet, I never came to care about any of the characters and one in particular was very disagreeable and easy to dislike. I felt the book's ending was much stronger than the first half, but overall it wasn't anything special.

Always a sucker for passages about books and libraries, I especially liked this particular paragraph:

It was there, in late May 1954, that Charles sat in the library reading a book about Catherine of Aragon. He loved the library, its mahogany shelves that climbed to the ceiling, its bounty of lush pages majestically restrained. He loved it especially on days like this, when it was empty, steeped in quiet, electric with promise, as if the books were breathing, alive as big dogs sleeping at the foot of his bed. He reveled in that particular stillness, in which he felt as if he could, at any minute, turn a page and recognize everything there was in the world to know.

A year from now, I will probably only have a vague memory of this debut novel, but in spite of my overall reaction, I think it would be a good book club choice, as there is quite a bit to discuss about faith, marriage, and family.