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fruit of the loom
6 Nov 06
MacDonald, Ann-Marie. Fall on Your Knees. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1996.
I’ve been reading and rather enjoying Fall on Your Knees. It’s gripping enough I keep forgetting to look for things to write down. There’s lots of good stuff, here. The writing is engaging, and the story is compelling—although occasionally a bit melodramatic. Melodrama being the stage version of gothic, I’ve wondered whether to include this book in that seemingly long forgotten project. There’s certainly a lot of Roman Catholicism (which is barely this side of the supernatural) and one of the central characters has started having dreams that include details of real events she could not possibly know; unless, subconsciously, she has cobbled together these important bits from the stories her sister has told her.
At any rate, today I ran across this and just had to make note of it:
But she hasn’t had a chance to read the little book herself because Frances grabbed it, turned to the last page — as is her habit with all books — and read it aloud. Lily has understood everything in the happy-death prayer except one word.
“What’s a viaticum?”“It’s a holy word for clean underwear.”“Can I see the book now Frances?”Lily reaches, but Frances pulls the book away and explains, “When you’re about to die and the priest comes and gives you extreme unction, he takes a set of clean underwear out of your drawer and blesses them. Then he puts them on you. Or if it’s an emergency and there’s no priest, anyone can bless the clean underwear. That’s were Fruit of the Loom underwear comes from, it comes from the Hail Mary when you say ‘Blessed is the fruit of thy loom, Jesus.’ ”
Posted by pzed on November 6, 2006 at 8.57pm
Categories: fragments, gothic, scripture
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