I first heard about this book a little over 6 years ago.

At that time, a friend of mine was reading it at a writers' retreat.

He said it was very different from McCarthy's other books.

What made it interesting was the fact that it's a novel written as a play.

He didn't say much else about it, but I added it to my reading list, planning to read it eventually.

Well, unfortunately, that friend has since passed away.

I truly wish he hadn't.

Because now that I've read the book, I really want to have a further discussion with him about it.

In many ways, it was kind of like the discussions my friend and I had on that weekend.

It was a discussion between a person of faith and a person without.

However, unlike White in the book, my friend would never attempt suicide.

And unlike Black, I've never been to prison or murdered anyone.

This book is really good stuff.

It's the only thing I've ever read by CM where no one actually dies in the course of the story.

It makes me eager to read his other plays.

It makes me think deeply.

And it makes me remember my friend vividly.

This type of play is one that I have really enjoyed reading, translating, or working on.

It is the kind of play that relies on dialogue rather than simple stage plays.

It makes you think and think, not just feel confused.

It doesn't get lost in overly simplistic symbolism or blatant straightforwardness.

A white atheist on the verge of suicide is saved by a black believer. They sit in the believer's house and talk a little.

That's the basic idea.

The name of the play is taken from the name of the train that the suicidal white man was about to step in front of.

The psychological and nervous pressure from the dialogue makes you think a lot and a lot. The lack of thought is not as simple as it seems.

Belief and disbelief are extremely relative things. Maybe we believe in the same thing, but we are completely opposite sides of it, or each of us interprets it in our own way.

How do you convince someone who is trying to commit suicide on his birthday not to do it?

By talking about God and the afterlife?

Or about the family?

Or about hell and heaven?

Or about hope?

How do you do this?

How can you reach that point with one of them?

All those questions that you think about as you listen to the beautifully written dialogue without trying to prove anything.

It's a wonderful play.

I highly recommend watching the TV film based on the play and listening to it as an audio book for two extremely enjoyable experiences.

It was one of the initial days when I was permitted to meet clients. The school had examined the profiles and intended to assign us these so-called "underhands", if one could say that respectfully about anyone. But you understand what I mean: perhaps they aimed to pair you with younger adults, cases of depression or anxiety where you could test some "theory" and emerge after 12 - 16 sessions having learned something by the book. I was extremely worried. Mainly, like most budding practitioners, I was truly concerned about how I would be perceived. I was afraid that I would be asked a question and not know the answer. I endeavored to soak up materials, books, videos, and engage in role-plays. I sought reassurance from my mentors, inquiring what to do if X or Y or even Z occurred. Above all, I was informed that it wouldn't be overly serious or clinical enough to worry about the session spiraling out of control.

Three sessions in, a client looked me straight in the eye and asked me why he should continue living. It wasn't a rhetorical question. He waited for my response. Well, none of the impeccably depicted T (for "therapist") and P (for "patient") dialogues in the therapy books had prepared me for this moment. I stammered and recited the classic safety plans and listed the reasons the other person had to keep living. Family, friends, pets? Things to anticipate tomorrow? He could easily come up with the list. After we finished, he repeated the original question, in as composed a manner as you could envision. My answer will remain between the two of us, but suffice it to say that my familiarity with one Virginia Woolf and one Cormac McCarthy proved to be extremely useful.

Now, all these years later, I am confronted with the same issue presented in a McCarthy book. That was not something I had anticipated. However, the trajectory of the journey, I had. It's what transpires when you come face to face with the belief that you must invest in the most intricate entities on Earth: human beings.

The Sunset Limited (RHM, 2012) by Cormac McCarthy condenses in a single dialogue the interests that the great Mac has carried throughout his work: the meaning of life, the inevitable death, and the existence of God as a silent entity.

Unlike Suttree with its existential complexity or The Road with its unique setting, The Sunset Limited presents a dialogue rich in wisdom from experience and pure dialectics. A white man, a professor with extensive culture and a privileged life, is, as Cioran would say, at the peaks of despair. He attempts to throw himself onto the train tracks, but the fortuitous appearance of a black man, with a past marked by violence, drug addiction, and life in prison, stops him.

From then on, confined in the black man's apartment, the two will debate about the meaning of life. The white man approaches it from the pessimism that wisdom has made him discover, while the black man does so from faith, with the Bible in hand as the anchor that rescued him from hell. McCarthy needs no more to create a great work. Written in the form of a theatrical dialogue, it once again points to the yoke of existence: can one be happy or not? And how does faith in a silent God influence this?

In the end, you will decide who is right, but you will not remain calm when the door of that apartment in a black suburb of New York closes.

Classification: Moving.