I'm in the middle of John F. Deane's "The Coffin Master and Other Stories" and while it's really very good, I'm finding it a bit bleak and not hitting the right note with me at this moment. Certainly the title should have been a tip-off that it's not a knee slapper.
The best story, "From a Walled Garden" concerns a young woman Angelica sent to a convent for a year to repent under a vow of silence for having sex before marriage. She slowly goes insane. Both her mind and body suffer from the denial of the self. She hallucinates about death, rot, and temptations of the flesh in her tiny cell every evening removed from reality. The nuns tell her to give herself up to god and reject personal pleasure.
It reminded me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic "The Yellow Wallpaper." She becomes another madwoman in the metaphoric attic.
Upon her release, the groundskeeper tells Angelica to go with god.
She replies to end the story:

" 'God?' I said. No, sir, no clacketing, demanding, wizened old God, there will be no God, malevolent and self-absorbed and filled with bitterness, there will be no God at all with me from now on.' I smiled sweetly at him and turned, light and carefree, back to the world."

The young woman characterizes god as a punishing patriarch who was ultimately responsible for her year of torment and pain. I like that she "smiled sweetly"at the old man to indicate that the experience didn't break her.

Mr. M and I are heading out tonight for dinner and he suggested that we go out later than our normal early hour of 6p.m.
You know, like most people.
We always eat early because I don't eat lunch and he's up by 6a.m. every day.
So I'll be snacking to tide me over.