THE SILVER CORD by ANONYMOUS

‘To be the curator of another’s love is no light or laughing matter. It is a grave, sacred, and honorable undertaking. It is a lifelong post, a vigil until the end. I had known this once, but I had forgotten it somewhere along the way.’

Our hearts are wrecked. Completely and utterly wrecked. Not only from the events in The Silver Cord but from the consequences that followed the end of this story into The Silver Cage, bringing those original feelings to the surface once again, adding a whole new depth to those original emotions.

Going back in time to Caleb and Jamie’s ill-fated love story gave us a better understanding of the events of The Silver Cage. If Caleb Bright cut a sad, troubled and lonely figure in Silver Cage, our feelings intensified tenfold once we came to fully understand how his emotional and mental state came to be, and it broke us. Our hearts were annihilated, leaving us in a flood of tears, with these characters consuming our souls days after finishing, and yet, we wouldn’t have missed this reading experience for the world. This book made us feel so much.

‘Intimacy is easier, simpler than morality. It is a land without borders; morality is a civil war.’

We were with Jamie and Caleb every moment, from the heady, perplexing days of youth, sharing their confusion and love, their sorrow and despair and beyond, though we could never shake the dark cloud and impending pain we knew we were destined to feel. Jamie Foust and Caleb Bright should have been allowed to ‘just be‘. They should’ve been allowed to expose and embrace their love, but unfortunately, their strict Christian upbringing and their desire to ‘to the right thing’ would continually plague them, and shape their future lives.

‘There was no point in saying I loved someone I wasn’t allowed to love.’

The Silver Cord is a melancholy coming of age story delivered with the utmost honesty, sincerity and breathtakingly intoxicating prose from this incredibly talented author. Told in an almost autobiographical way we forgot we were reading a work of fiction. The rawness of the storytelling had us believing and experiencing every aching moment as though we knew the characters, making this reading experience sharper, more personal, with an overpowering instinct to protect these sensitive beautiful men from the world around them.

‘It is difficult to speak about happiness. Life rushes forward continually and we are pulled along with it, a child one day and an adult the next.’

A range of emotions; a small amount of hope, anger, frustration, sadness over the family influences in these boy’s lives left us bereft. These two boys who became men and never stopped sacrificing their own happiness for others, with their religious beliefs tormenting them with a need to fit into society.

This author is nothing short of brilliant. The way in which these sensitive characters love story was brought to fruition, the way in which it was delivered with such a realistic narrative, gave us much pause for thought in this emotionally charged and tragically complicated love story.

Our combatted hearts are forever touched by Jamie, Caleb, and this phenomenal author. Love is a religion we should all embrace. Love is love. End of.