The Soft Architecture of Devotion
On Benjamin Koch’s Between Now and Always A review by Clara Wetherell, Literary Correspondent
In an era when novels increasingly demand to astonish, Between Now and Always does something far more difficult - and far more valuable. It invites us to stay.
The second novel by Benjamin Koch, following his tenderly acclaimed From Pillow to Pillow, returns to the lives of Rachel and Elias - not to upheave them, but to observe them. To study what it means to truly live beside another human being, not just for a moment, but through time.
This is not a novel of grand gestures or sharp turns. It is a novel of interiors - the rooms we inhabit, the letters we write but never send, the quiet of a mountain home whose silence is a kind of listening. Koch writes not to entertain, but to accompany. His sentences arrive like snow: slow, soft, persistent. And when you look up, the world has changed beneath them.
There is no traditional conflict at the heart of Between Now and Always. Instead, there is space. Space between conversations, between chapters, between breaths. Space that allows meaning to expand.
But make no mistake - this is not a book without stakes. In fact, the stakes here are the most human of all: How do we remain present when the world encourages movement? How do we preserve intimacy in the quiet erosion of routine? How do we love - not just once, but again, and again, and again?
Koch’s background in psychology and law is evident in his precision. Every word is measured. Every silence is structural. Every gesture, even the steeping of tea or the folding of laundry, becomes a kind of ritual architecture. And within that architecture, Rachel and Elias evolve - not in dramatic arcs, but in slow unfolding, like hands that learn how to hold again after forgetting what it means to grasp.
Readers familiar with From Pillow to Pillow will find this sequel less about rediscovery and more about inhabiting. New readers need not fear - Between Now and Always stands entirely on its own. What Koch offers here is not continuation in plot, but in emotional philosophy.
This is a novel for those who believe that love is not a spark, but a slow fire. For those who know that some of the most important promises are whispered not at the altar, but in kitchens, in mountain fog, in letters written at dusk. For those who understand that presence is the most radical form of devotion.
In a time of acceleration, Between Now and Always asks us to pause. To return. To dwell. It is a novel not of closure, but of invitation. And as you turn its final pages, you don’t feel like you’ve reached the end. You feel like you’ve come home.
Author: Benjamin Koch
Publisher: epubli GmbH, Berlin
Pages: 130+
Categories: Literary Fiction / Contemporary, Romance / Quiet Love & Domestic Life, Psychological Fiction / Emotional & Reflective, Philosophical Fiction / Relationships & Time, Marriage & Long-Term Love
Available: Softcover, eBook
ISBN 9783819079085 Softcover
ISBN 9783819079092 ePUB
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