mark reviewed Seven Steeples by Sara Baume
Dreamlike chronicle of cohabitation
5 stars
Two people move to a house in rural Ireland and live there, in an every-shrinking world, for eight years. That is, essentially, the plot of the book. But what the book is about - at least to me - is the dread and joys of living with someone, experiencing both growth and entropy together. I spent most of the book reading in a state of apprehension, waiting in agony for the moment where the solitude of the couple is interrupted, where their precarious poverty becomes too much to bear, where illness or money or the outside world intrudes upon the life they've made for themselves. It's almost like domestic horror where the danger is entropy. An incredible book.