The Transcendence
Mara Recalis
FriesenPress (2022)
ISBN: 978-1039133808
Reviewed by Paul Knobloch for Reader Views (09/2025)
Author Mara Recalis is a Canadian poet and fiction writer who is also a certified reflexologist and herbalist. It’s important to remember this because it is most likely her journeys as a healer that helped inspire these short stories and poems about Holland Millar and those close to him.
We meet Holland right off the bat, in the first chapter, as he describes how he awoke in a hospital room after a serious but unidentified illness. Whether or not it was a stroke or some sort of near-death experience, it shook Holland to his core and gave him profound personal and spiritual insights. In The Transcendence, Recalis probes deep into these kinds of experiences, the ones that cause us to reflect, and hopefully, grow.
This opening story, “Some Things Never Change,” is quite ironic, because Holland has certainly changed, and this, for all intents and purposes, is the point of the book: transcendence is not only real, but attainable. In the first-person, Holland recalls a poignant letter that he wrote to his wife, Margaret: a letter that ended up saving his marriage. He realizes that he has rediscovered what is important, and he has learned to live in the moment, to experience the evanescent beauty of the present in a way he never has before. It is precisely this transformation that allows him to stare into his daughter’s eyes and see her glimmering, radiant, spiritual essence during nothing more than a common, everyday exchange with a loved one.
Holland has learned gratitude.
The author progresses from this initial short story into a series of poems, little slice-of-life tales, and ruminations on philosophy and being often influenced by the wisdom of the East. Recalis has learned her Buddhist lessons quite well and conveys the process of transcendence as a collage or pastiche, which is a clever way of getting at the truth. Like a psychedelic experience, these moments of spiritual awakening demand to be examined and ruminated upon in order to tease meaning from the mystery. Because the experience is so unique, a straightforward narrative does not suit this kind of material. Instead, Recalis uses a kaleidoscopic approach, almost like Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project, where she parallels or mimics the spiritual epiphany. It is a heady mélange of emotions, smells, feelings, sights, sounds, and memories that she shares with us in no particular order. There is no strong, driving narrative here. It nevertheless works beautifully as it is because a poetic approach, one drenched in metaphor, is the only way to convey a divine experience.
By the time you’re to the end of this genre-defying novella, all is clear, and a beautiful portrait has been painted. It’s one of redemption, love, and a path toward real meaning in life. This book is more of an experience than a story. I’ve been through my share of trials, and I’ve had my moments of insight, so this work spoke to me on a deeply personal level. Her poems, such as this sample from “I Shall Perform My Miracles,” do a nice job at capturing just what it means to stand before the divine in a transcendent moment:
The flood of heartbeat and heaving rushing in,
Tremours of jubilance rock me to-and-fro,
Earth, sky, earth, sky, earth – now Heaven
Vastness of panoramic turbulence
Silencing the existence that I once was.
This book will be a very inspiring and enjoyable read for anyone interested in spirituality, personal transformation, and self-realization. For a reader who wants poetic, divine, and yes, transcendent moments of beauty, or a modern take on William Blake that’s not so daunting, The Transcendence by Mara Recalis hits the mark.