Oliver doesn't commit suicide. Gillian doesn't go back to Stuart. There are children. Everything turned around from Talking it Over and there is still a story to tell. Perhaps, as Mme Wyatt muses, something will happen.
Death is the only certainty, both for the characters and the reader.
But in the space between, perhaps there is room in there somewhere for a brief moment of joy. This beautifully moving, intense and often painful story traces the fall and redemption of the son of two missionaries. As he begins a series of sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins, he finds himself falling into obsession, as his own appetites draw him further away from his family and the things which he once believed in. The story ends with a twist, as the narrator begins to understand where life's real beauty and meaning lies in the face of his former myopia. Send this article to a friend.