Luna Gale by Rebecca Gilman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
NOTE: The following is response feedback that I wrote for the class I read LUNA GALE for, so take this “review” with that in mind!
Also? ** SPOILER ALERT!!! **
I have to say that Luna Gale has really influenced me to focus on a project that has been nitpicking at me for a long time. Since 2012. It’s called “The Right Hand”, and it delves into the question of religion, faith, and God in a different way. It’s a genre piece, but also sort of a philosophical wandering”, I guess.
Not to make it sound more important than it is, but I think working on “The Right Hand” feels apt.
This is especially true because I really struggled with the morality compass in this story. Everyone felt pretty deplorable and untrustworthy; Caroline is certainly not innocent here, but I really felt as though she was completely outnumbered. Not only that, she was fighting some sort of secret cabal at the very same time that she was fighting all of the bureaucratic issues at work. Religion is not an issue, but when your co-workers and key members of a case are banding together based on faith, to the extent that they ignore clear-cut state policies, well… Houston, we have a problem.
Religion is not an issue, but when your co-workers and key members of a case are banding together based on faith, to the extent that they ignore clear-cut state policies, well… Houston, we have a problem. At the same time, Caroline was operating on a faith of her own, which was also super dangerous, especially considering the potential fate of Luna Gale. I mean, her parents almost killed her via neglect and stupidity, and Caroline believes that “they’re good people”? Well guess what? Babies aren’t little rewards that are given out to “good people”; and Caroline was treating Luna Gale as just that, prioritizing her “good feelings” about Karlie and Peter over what was really the best for Luna.
It just seemed as though, as was brilliantly said in class, that everyone was so high off their own faith-based beliefs that they ignored the facts. Thankfully, we have a somewhat happy ending, but we reached this point with very little faith it would turn out that way.
As for the actual “quality” of the play, Luna Gale knocks us down and out of the park. 🙂 I really loved reading it because the characters with very multifaceted and we never really knew what their motivations were. The playwright is masterful in hiding the “real” play that she is writing, which kept me in some serious suspense!
Rock on, READ on,
<3 Colby