Faith, Hope, and Carnage

The Conversation's Lyn McCredden notes the honesty that Cave has for approaching the darker times in his life and how the musician has turned toward forgiveness, a sense of mystery, and attempts at radical listening as he has aged.^[11] Writing for the Australian Broadcasting Company, Adrian Rosenfeldt notes Cave's attempts to work through his grief with this book as well as his blog Red Hand Files that allowed him to interact with fans directly: both works allow the singer to "challeng[e] the overarching values that underlie the modern West: secularism, rationalism, and individualism... and to argue that religion and music help us to recognise a deeper, more creative way of being".^[12]

In

Éamon Sweeney of The Irish Times calls the book "brave and brilliant" work with "illuminating reflections on loss and ‘the terrible beauty of grief’" that was made possible due to the decades-long association the musician and journalist have with one another.^[3] A review of the books of the year by several critics in the newspaper found Sinéad Gleeson writing that this book "stopped [her] in [her] tracks".^[24] Barry Egan of Irish Independent recalls Cave's history of drug use and religious skepticism and how they are expressed in the book as well as the deaths of Cave's son and mother that make for "a book that fuses his humour, intellect, wit and passion into one long philosophical meditation on living and dying".^[25]

Several reviewers from Christian spiritual press have praised the work as well. In

• Theological virtues, defined as faith, hope and charity (i.e. love)

References