Book Review: A Lesser Light by Peter Geye

Reviewer: Jace DeAngelo

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I have no reservations about judging a book by its first page. If the opening lines don’t reel me in, it usually goes right into my DNF (did not finish) list—unless I am fatally bored. A Lesser Light by Peter Geye had me hooked immediately. While the beginning wasn’t quite poetry, it was something similar, and it was just the right mix of intriguing and tongue-in-cheek to get me brimming with questions.

The author has a unique way of balancing tone: many sentences simultaneously raise questions and make serious implications yet remain lackadaisical. A good example of this is, “For a moment, she fancied stepping into the killing waters.” This combination encourages the reader to be curious while helping the narrative feel more grounded and mundane. This wry, almost whimsical tone is threaded throughout a narrative of religious zealotry and interpersonal drama.

If you’re a fan of minimalist writing—turn away. While A Lesser Light is far from overbearingly purple, Geye is exceedingly fond of metaphor and detailed descriptions. I thoroughly enjoyed his fresh turn of phrases, although my Google search history might raise a few eyebrows. Geye casually flings around words like “strychnine” and “basso profundo” right from the rip. I know a lot of words, but Geye uses a lot of niche vocabulary with a focus on obscure musical terminology, and I enjoyed learning more.

I rarely see a well-written, clever, and calculating woman protagonist. Luckily, Willa Sauer is all those things and more; “she made a silent vow; her covenant would be with the wilds—the wolves and water and celestial bodies. She would remain as agnostic as nature. And as cunning.” Willa is unerringly herself in a world that wants her to abide by its rules. When made to confess her sins, she “felt gleeful and hurried through a litany of false sins […] What else was forbidden?”

Willa’s fraught relationship with her husband is the main source of tension in the novel. I cheered aloud when she struck him back after he hit her. Theodulf, her husband, is a complex character that I took pleasure in loathing. This sums him up nicely: “His remorse, though, took a moment to classify. […] he visited the chamber of his faith, then his marriage, then his family name. He found no guilt in any of them. […] It was only in dishonoring himself that he felt any culpability.” Where Willa is defiant and curious, he is willfully ignorant and pridefully obedient. Where Willa’s instinct is to help a distressed child, Theodulf is blinded by the inconvenience of having his routine disrupted. This dichotomy is the perfect source of conflict—every lull is followed by a clash in their inherent characteristics that pushes the story further and further into tension and intrigue.

I enjoyed this book immensely. I would love to have a physical copy to mark up because a reread would reveal things I missed the first go around. If you like prose and character-driven stories, you’ll enjoy A Lesser Light.

Favorite Lines:

“They were so close she could reach out and hold their music.”
“Wisps of fog still licked the lantern room, as if it were exhaling, its breath plenty, for the fog no sooner ended than the clouds did commence. She scanned the rest of the sky to discern the time, but there was none.”
“This bedlamite. This quibbling gasbag. This dullard.”
“The cove was glass-like, the sky pink and guileful, the woods and shore blanketed by downy snow.”
“Did he crumple like bed linen falling from a drying line?”
“The birds have killed my song.”
“Whether that shattered light was a song or a soul, she had only a hunch.”