agatha of little neon by claire luchette

I was writing early drafts through the first person plural, but that didn’t really allow me to get into any of the interesting stuff that goes on between groups of people and like the strange power dynamics that exist in any group. How did you manage to balance which parts of the story were about groups and which were about the singular?Ĭlaire Luchette: The story started as an exploration of group dynamics. But at the same time, so much of the book is focused solely on Agatha and her interior.

Between the sisters, between the sisters and Mother Roberta, between the Neons, and even the girls at school. I talked on the phone with Claire Luchette about a quiet, queer interior, the rare beauty of Fleabag season two, and how to write men in a story of sisterhood.Īlex Juarez: One of the main things that I immediately noticed and that stuck with me the entire book is that it’s such a relationship-oriented story. After seeing many family members struggle with addiction, I’ve seen how the church is one of the only places offering support. I suppressed my sexuality until I was in college because I was afraid of disappointing my loved ones. But, my home is littered with crosses and angels.

My mother was taught by her grandmother that only a priest could truly interpret the Bible. I was baptized at seven at the behest of my great aunt, who was also my father’s Godmother.

I am a generation removed from Catholicism. For Agatha, recognizing that gap comes with the larger stake of ending the bond she has with her fellow sisters. Not for the people who have tangible needs and hardships at odds with the Church’s creed. And inside the home are people that the Church says, ”need God and prayer and mercy.” But it doesn’t seem like enough. Then quickly they are transported to another world of graffiti of men’s genitalia, discount groceries, and a halfway home painted neon green. “There was nothing new for us in that basilica, only things that had always been there, and though we could not admit it to each other, that’s what we wanted, too: to always be there, in the place we’d become sisters.

At the start, when the sisters prepare to leave their home of nine years, they pray in the front pew and Agatha recounts the grandiose beauty of the church: Tension builds throughout this novel in vignettes. However, after the move, the youngest nun Agatha is slowly peeled from the comfort of anonymity and constancy and into interrogating her own wants. The four blend together at first, having spent the last nine years in unison. The story opens with four sisters who are being removed from their home near Buffalo to be put in charge of running a halfway house in Rhode Island, Little Neon. At first it is unassuming, as a woman in a habit can be. Claire Luchette‘s novel Agatha of Little Neonpacks a suckerpunch beyond its bold pink cover.

Agatha of little neon by claire luchette