A heartfelt but rudimentary attempt to find religious comfort in the face of the anguish of losing a beloved pet.
A debut illustrated book details God’s love for animals.
Homan’s slim work springs from a sad question that will be familiar to every Christian pet owner: Will I see my cherished friend in heaven? The author asked this question when she lost her miniature schnauzer Sadie in 2014. The dog had only been 8 years old, and, as Homan writes, “I needed to believe that she was in Heaven and that we would see each other again…but I am a Bible believing Christian and the only thing that brings me total peace is the Word of my Father.” Thus began a search for some scriptural evidence that she would one day be reunited with Sadie. The book—which features family photographs of Sadie and colorful, full-page, uncredited illustrations—explores several famous animal passages in the Old and New Testaments. But the core of the author’s earnest case is found in Genesis 9, when God makes a new covenant with Noah. This covenant, Homan maintains, applies not just to Noah and his family, but to all of the animals on the ark as well: “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.” In the author’s view, this means that God is promising all animals a place in heaven since they are “the epitome of unconditional love and devotion, forgiveness and complete joy.” A couple of things will be obvious from this simple interpretation. Homan is taking the story of Noah’s Flood literally. And when she refers to animals, she’s clearly thinking of pets rather than a conception of paradise that includes, for example, mosquitoes and roaches. Christian readers who can make these same leaps will feel consoled by the author’s basic, upbeat, and touching reading of Scripture.
A heartfelt but rudimentary attempt to find religious comfort in the face of the anguish of losing a beloved pet.Pub Date: March 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-973656-45-6
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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