One purpose of From the Chronicles of Lupa is to unearth and uncover deeper emotions than are usually portrayed in modern fiction; certainly in literary fiction, which always seems so arid in its themes and emotional range.
Perhaps that reflects the experience of lit fiction's readership: the ennui, the quiet dry desperation of prosperous middle-class white women of a certain age, no doubt heightened by the ravages of menopause.
Ruby's confession at the peak of her last confrontation with Jesse provides a great example. This woman does not suffer commonplace emotions, but rather feels "things that have been forgotten by the world, insane and prohibited things."
Her love and her vengeance especially, which do not differ in depth or intensity: "My love is not different from death because it endures like death, and if my love were to end it would leave my soul and the world in ashes."
I won't spoil the story by revealing the end of this confrontation, but I would sincerely commend it to you. As I would the rest of the love scene, and indeed the whole work, which really seeks to depict how we all thought love should be until we were brutalised by the world.
P. Julian
24 September 2018
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Here is the quote with some context:
So come to me, Beloved. Do it now. I will not tolerate your objections. Come to me as quickly as you can. Don’t bother to shower. Do not dress up for me, your clothes will only get torn.
If you mean what you say, Jesse James. You will be mine or you will be nobody’s. That is what it means, to be loved by a woman like me. Bear all of your strength to me, even in the knowledge that it may not be enough.
Ruby finished what she had to say and sat quietly, listening for Jesse’s voice on the other end of the line. Even though she knew that he was no longer there, that he had ended the call in obedience to her demands and was running to her through the darkness just as she had commanded him.
In her deep heart Ruby saw Jesse coming towards her, in her pledged soul that would always know when this man was on her horizon. She felt him gather like a sun and speed through the night towards her, his arrival that would precede the majesty of the dawn. At the merest thought of it, the light and the heat within his body, Ruby was released into her ecstasy once more.