Two Euro Candles

<p><strong>Winner - 2025 Literary Global Book Awards</strong></p><p><strong>Semi-Finalist - 2025 The Somerset Awards (Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions)</strong></p><p><strong>5-Star review - Reader Views Book Reviews</strong></p><p></p><p><strong><em>Two Euro Candles</em></strong> by Maxsense Maximus is a confessional novel that fuses memoir fiction and spiritual meditation. Set in Ostend it begins with the narrator retreating from personal turmoil seeking solitude on the North Sea coast. Instead he becomes immersed in the rhythm of the city: cafés laundrettes and above all the church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul where a ritual unfolds-candles lit for two euros each flame carrying whispered prayers from the desperate the hopeful and the broken.</p><p></p><p>The narrator observes these small acts with irony and tenderness. Sometimes he laughs at their transactional absurdity yet he is moved to tears by their raw humanity such as a child asking Mary to stop her mother's grief. His reflections expand into his own history: childhood violence a fractured brotherhood and the weight of generational trauma. Returning to Belgium becomes both pilgrimage and confrontation.</p><p></p><p>Amid these fragments emerges the voice of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux-not solemn but playful witty and unafraid to mock. Her presence unsettles and consoles pushing the narrator to confront doubts seek authenticity and wrestle with faith as honesty rather than conformity.</p><p></p><p>Blending humour with sorrow absurdity with grace <strong><em>Two Euro Candles</em></strong> is a mosaic of moments rather than a traditional plot. It offers no neat resolutions but insists that small gestures-lighting a candle whispering a name or daring to laugh in the silence-may themselves be miraculous. It is raw tender and quietly luminous.</p>