Here is my Goodreads review of Jane Urquhart's magnificent novel In Winter I Get Up at Night. Urquhart, a multi-award-winning celebrated Canadian writer, appears to be so obscure in the USA that the massive New York Public Library doesn't have this book. (Hence, the displayed e-book, courtesy of Bookshop.org. Same price as the amazonian's e-book.)
I don't say much in the review because I don't want to spoil any of the discovery of it. But there is a lot I'd like to say.
This is a book about seduction as it relates to racism. I would never say that in a review because it is completely at odds with what most people will feel for the longest time and maybe even at the end, they will not articulate it. But this is my post, so I'm saying it.
"For seduction is a soft thing," Urquhart writes near the end of the story. "It fills your rooms with golden light, sings your praises, makes you feel elected. Sainted."
In my opinion, seduction, not hate, is at the root of racism. People who practice allegiance to charismatic racists feel bathed in their "golden light." People who pick up modern slurs, denigrating others, are pumped up by superiority and righteousness so impermeable that, even when it is pointed out, they are immune to the notion that they are doing anything hurtful or wrong. People who feel a "manifest destiny" aka "entitlement" to privileges that are denied others have been drugged with a false sense of supremacy. They have been seduced and don't even know they are flying on ego as flimsy as a cloud.
But, writes Urquhart in the next paragraph:
"Abandonment, however, is not to be endured, because it provides proof that—no matter how he made you feel when he was now and then in town—you are ordinary after all."
Seduction based on the ego's need for superiority is always followed by abandonment.