We Are the Light by Matthew Quick is about a small community coming together after an unspeakable act of violence occurs. Lucas Goodgame is a school guidance counselor who helps children adjust to issues that they might have at home or at school. He lives in the quaint suburb community of Majestic, Pennsylvania. At a local movie theater, a gunman entered and slaughtered multiple victims before he was stopped. Lucas is considered a local hero because of his act of courage in stopping the gunman.
Lucas doesn’t see himself as a hero and tries to avoid the attention from others. He insists that his deceased wife, Darcy, is an angel who is guiding him. Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former “Jungian analyst”, Karl, to help cope after the deadly tragedy.
Everything changes when Eli, an eighteen year old, starts to camp out in Lucas’s backyard. Eli was a former student of Lucas and he is related to the gunman. Lucas feels that Eli is the way to heal the community and themselves. They embark together to fuel their grief and anxiety into making art while bringing in the other survivors from that night to help.
The author is well known for his other books but this was my first time reading any of his novels. The novel is written in epistolary style, meaning that it is written in the form of letters that Lucas writes. Lucas writes and spills his heart to his former analyst to help himself cope with his grief. The writing style was an interesting choice but it felt limiting as we only got Lucas’s point of view.
I didn’t understand what a Jungian analyst was and the process. The author did explain that he was a fan of it but didn’t do a thorough job of communicating what this therapy was to the reader. I personally felt like I didn’t quite understand it and it took away some enjoyment from the novel. The author did mention that he was going through his own struggles and that this form of therapy helped him. I felt that the author included too many phallic/“being a man” references in the beginning. The main female character, Darcy’s best friend, Jill, does all the household work and becomes caregiver to Lucas. She has to handle all the bills, the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and budgeting while Lucas goes off on his madcap adventures and ideas. Lucas rarely considers her feelings and she is made to be seen as an annoyance or getting in Lucas’ way instead of being the life support she really is. Gender stereotypes were rampant in this book.
I felt like the plot was predictable, boring, and moved very slowly. There were a lot of side stories going on that were overwhelming at times. I didn’t care for Lucas as a main character. He seemed like a petulant child that would throw tantrums when things didn’t go his way. He seemed to be struggling with his grief and acting erratically while his supposedly close friends were enabling him. This story might have been a great movie but it was lackluster for a book. The visual aspect may have been a better medium for the suspenseful pieces of this book.
