A deceptively simple and moving novel about a pastor juggling professional responsibilities and a personal awakening.
A debut novel about a good-hearted pastor in a small Midwestern town.
“Our God is full of surprises,” says Father Del Carnation in Hanway’s straightforward, affecting debut novel, “and people are the most surprising creatures of all.” But as this novel opens, Father Del, an Episcopal pastor in the small, idyllic, but cloistered town of Exeter, is leading an unsurprising life. He has a settled parish and a contented routine, but he’s been a widower for three years, and his grown daughter seldom visits. Aside from the many challenges and satisfactions of his pastoral calling, he feels lonely. As he tells his grief counselor, “I live in three worlds, and I often wonder which one is the most real.” There’s the day-to-day world, in which his parishioners and a constantly shifting cast of strangers are forever asking him for favors or guidance; the spiritual world, in which he owes his primary duty to God; and the world of “unfulfilled longings.” Hanway does a low-key but very skillful job of bringing all three of these worlds to life. He dramatizes the day-to-day aspect with a detailed look at Father Del’s life as a community leader, and these passages have a warmth that’s similar to that found in J.F. Powers’ novels; he illustrates the spiritual with several of Father Del’s excellent Sunday sermons. But the pastor’s longings are most involving, as Father Del finds himself falling in love with Rachel, a single mother who’s just recently moved to town to live with her aunt. Hanway confidently plays out the unfolding relationship against the backdrop of Father Del’s professional duties; one subplot, for example, involving a gay teenager afraid of small-town intolerance, is particularly well-handled. The author also draws many other secondary characters with economic skill. From these fairly simple ingredients he crafts a story that’s heartwarming without being saccharine. It also avoids dealing with current religious controversies (“a kindness sparing both the reader and the writer,” Hanway wryly notes) in order to focus on the universal dynamics of human relationships.
A deceptively simple and moving novel about a pastor juggling professional responsibilities and a personal awakening.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0595525072
Page Count: 232
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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