An essay by Amy Welborn on a novel called The Feast:
It is the fall of 1947 on the ruggedly picturesque Cornwall coast, and Reverend Bott must write a sermon. A normal part of the job, yes, but the minister is struggling with this one, for the occasion is particularly challenging. People were dead, others had survived, but he could not exactly deliver a funeral sermon. The bodies in question were already irretrievably buried under a massive, collapsed cliff. All had been guests or employees at the ramshackle seaside hotel at the base when, not without (unheeded) warning, the cliff had fallen, engulfing the inn and all who were inside. What could anyone say in the face of such a tragedy?
He begins to type: Be still and know that I am God. But that does not seem quite right, not enough. Those survivors who had left the inn for another gathering that night—a feast high above the sea, near, but not on the cliff—straggle into the church. Perhaps if he related their stories, he might approach an understanding of the mystery of who died, who lived, and why.
