Anna Samwel Manyanza

When Pope Leo XIV said in his inaugural mass that “love and unity” were the only two dimensions of Jesus’ mission, he might have been addressing his clergy rather than his flock. From its stance on homosexuality, birth control, priestly celibacy, and roles for women, to its repeated failure to stop and prosecute clerical sex abuse, the Catholic Church is in crisis.

“I was never able to let go of the suspicion that Véra had intentionally denied me access to her inner world,” Agathe, the narrator of Elisa Shua Dusapin’s The Old Fire, confesses early in the novel. Dusapin’s fourth novel, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, revolves around two distant sisters, living entirely separate lives, brought together by the impending sale of their childhood home in the Périgord region of France. They last met five years ago, at their father’s funeral.

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