Anna Beecher's Debut Novel, Here Comes the Miracle, is a Testament to Memory as Resurrection.

What is grief, if not love persevering?

⛔ This review may contain spoilers. ⛔

Meet Joe, a miracle baby born too small and too early. Then Emily, his sister born two years after, who would come to love him more than life itself. Snake back through time and meet Edward, a young man moved to feel a love the world does not approve of yet; the man who would later become their grandfather. In comes somebody else. Eleanor; the last to fully enter this story and the first to leave it - Joe and Emily’s grandmother.

This is arguably the most beautyful book I’ve read this year – so far; a spot previously shared by Emezi’s Freshwater and Silvera’s They Both Die at the End.

If anything I would like to commend Anna Beecher’s prose; the poetic and lyrical way in which she weaves a story of love, of loss and the lingering clutches of grief in all its guises. In hindsight, you might believe this to be Joe’s story, about his sickness and the tumultuous journey his family is plunged into as they navigate their new normal. However, it is in this genius writing device that Beecher performs magic and manages to provide background on four key characters - a story that surpasses the infringements of time and space, bringing together the past and present, the reader finds themself at a crossroad trying to understand just what emotion to feel and how we’re meant to move forward.

Told by two voices – Emily’s and that of an unnamed omniscient narrator – we are taken through a lifetime of stories, of lives and fading faces and the impacts decisions made and unmade have on not just our own future but that of the people we bring into this world. Edward falls in love his friend Jack, and discovers something about himself that he will work to keep hidden from the world all his life – his first loss. Eleanor, a beautiful woman with dreams and a future so bright, falls in love with a monster dressed in fine clothes. She is one of the lucky few women who get to leave an abusive situation – however, this brings about its own loss, and an array of questions where her future lovers are concerned.

Here Comes the Miracle explores themes of terminal illness, homosexuality and family, poignantly examining the love and grief that these can provoke. As the lives of Edward, Eleanor, Joe and Emily unfold, reading Here Come the Miracle felt like piecing together a jigsaw, where every correctly placed piece makes the image of their lives progressively clearer.

At the beginning of the book, despite whatever thoughts you may already hold from reading the synopsis, there is one reality you cannot deny – it is the energy that surrounds both the story and the voice telling it. Grief. Memory. Detachment.

The reader can already sense that our protagonist, a distant Joe whose only presence is summoned by a ‘You’ his sister, our narrator, invokes with her words; has died. Or will die. From the very first sentence, his introduction to us at his birth – this small thing, with the world already against him, defiant and eager to live. It is even in this present (past?) moment bursting with life and possibility, one cannot escape the gnawing energy of loss. Emily’s voice reads like a eulogy, like a gravesite conversation with one’s dearly departed, and the closest thing to resurrecting them is through the magic of memory.

Jessica Townley on Goodreads wrote, ‘[T]his book is essentially about love, the love we experience when we are younger, the love we hide from others, the love that isn’t always the correct kind of love and as we explore the backstory of both Edward and Eleanor we clearly see how they have both experienced love and loss in completely different ways.’ I love how she packaged the different kinds of love the book showcased, and how at the end of the day, no matter what the world tells you, love is subjective.

There are many factors and themes that make this story the heart-wrenching tear-jerker it is, the relevant and deeply transcendent work of art. It is the way that the author transcends time to bring about the narrative of old, how she makes the events that made Edward and Eleanor the grandparents realistic and relevant to the present story.

Time is at the centre of this story, and the way that Edward and Eleanor do things and the decisions that impart something in the events of Joe and Emily’s existence provide for parallels to be investigated – Edward and Joe’s character dynamics, Emily and Eleanor’s character dynamics; as well as the way that Edward navigates his relationships is severely different to how Joe does. Edward’s relationship with his sister when mirrored to that of Joe and Emily’s. The author says something just as a chapter on Edward’s story closes, how in another life Edward calls his sister and tell her about Jack, about their mother’s decision to send him away… It makes one question if perhaps, had this happened, things would have turned out differently.

Here Comes the Miracle is like a retelling, with a lesson in the middle on how history has a tendency to play a cosmic joke on people, repeating itself in convoluted ways when those who’ve lived long enough to discern its lessons refuse to acknowledge them.

I have to admit that I was convinced that I wouldn’t cry that much when the inevitable happened, but I did. I felt this way because this was mostly Emily’s story and the love she had for her brother, her adoration. There’s something about the relationship and the words, the language she conjures up to describe him, to describe his presence in her life and the salient memories of their childhood – how, unlike him, she has never known a life where he was not already a part of it. He has always been there for her and with her. It is beautyful, endearing and almost the kind where one grows up looking up to an older sibling who shares a similar reverence for them and the love given and received merges and becomes one. It brings me to tears to imagine the burden she had to carry telling this story, the pain and the having to grow up and let go of your only brother – a person you’ve looked up to all your life. She was his best friend.

If anything, I felt and cried for her because she has to live with the ghost of what he meant to her.

It is in the way that Anna Beecher wrote this story that we truly find what is being sought, how this may be thought to be a book about loss and the pursuit of living post grief and death, but is also a testimony to the strength of life and the power that lies in one’s memory.

Words fail me when I have to describe just how gorgeous this book is. The narratives spilling that spill out from one person's story being told. You'd need to read it yourself.