Good fiction is like a life of faith...

This is precisely what readers are saying: that reading good fiction is like reading a particularly rich section of religious text. What religion and good fiction have in common is that the answers aren't there, there isn't closure. The language of literary works gives forth something different with each reading. But unpredictability doesn't mean total relativism. Instead it highlights the persistence with which writers keep coming back to fundamental problems. Your family versus your country, your wife versus your girlfriend. --Shirley Heath, quoted in Jonathan Franzen's book of essays How To Be Alone.