Sometimes profound and artful, this tale of spiritual redemption delivers too many narrative detours.
A minister tries to heal a spiritually depleted church and himself in this debut novel.
After his wife dies, Wesley Aames sheds his blue-chip job working for an engineering company and goes back to school to study theology. Three years later, he becomes the new minister of the New Covenant Church in Asheville, North Carolina. The church is bedeviled by financial problems, out of touch with modern technology, and vexed by a lack of purpose and confidence. In addition, the congregation remains divided over Aames’ selection as the new pastor, because many are concerned his lack of experience will hinder his leadership. Soon after Aames assumes his new role, Jamie Lee McFarland, a 15-year-old high school freshman and member of the church, tragically ends her own life. Her mother, Rosa Lee, seems chillingly indifferent to her death, and may even be partially responsible for it. The congregation demands her expulsion from the church, expressing this position even more vociferously after Rosa Lee signs a contract with a reality TV show that plans to take its cameras within New Covenant to film. Aames attempts to appease his flock while simultaneously wrestling with his own moral reservations about Rosa Lee’s behavior: “What bothers me the most is that I cannot find it in my heart to forgive Rosa Lee. Not her actions on the death of her daughter, not her lack of guilt or remorse, not her mercenary actions since her daughter’s death.” Andre deftly paints a portrait of spiritual crisis, and the ways in which moral judgment vitiates the call for merciful forgiveness. At its best, the story is reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead—a philosophically meditative anatomy of the pursuit of holiness amid pain. But Andre includes too many ancillary plots—Aames’ work at a suicide hotline, his conversations with a young basketball protégé, a controversy over a funeral for a gay man—that prove more distracting than narratively amplifying. The central plot remains a powerful one, though weighed down by competing ones—there’s simply too much crammed into these pages.
Sometimes profound and artful, this tale of spiritual redemption delivers too many narrative detours.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 272
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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