All The Living

ALL THE LIVING

by C.E. Morgan

 

Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2011, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2010

 

Date Read: November 26, 2021

 

All The Living is essentially a love story about two very flawed people (who isn’t?), trying to identify love amidst pain and uncertainty. Orren meeting Aloma while she’s living at a boarding school, having lost her parents at a very young age. Orren, young and cocksure, looks at her as if he is going to have her and have her he does.

 

Their affair continues for quite a while, he traveling across three counties on the weekends to be with her. Suddenly, his entire family is killed in a car accident (mother, father, brother) and he is left the family farm and his love for Aloma. She moves onto the farm with him in short order. But is what they share really love? Does Orren love the land more than her?

 

Just as Orren loves his farm, Aloma loves the piano. A gifted player, she seeks to play, her fingers aching to make music. She is finally able to land a gig playing for the local church but she presents herself to the preacher, Bell, as a single woman. Why she feels the need to play this charade is never quite clear. She isn’t married, after all, but she is in a committed relationship. Predictably, Bell and Aloma develop feelings for each other but no lines are ever crossed. When Bell finds out she has been lying to him, he fires her from the church gig, but the loss of her companionship is clearly what stings. 

 

Although their relationship is tumultuous, Orren and Aloma finally wed, Bell reluctantly performing the ceremony. They can’t even make it an hour afterwards without fighting but there is definitely something important between them. It might not seem like a tender kind of love but love it is nevertheless.

 

 “…the wrecking blast of the funnel cloud was also God’s creation along with the dirt of the farm and her stricken face and all the rest of the living too.”

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