An inviting account of one man’s ambivalence toward his own faith and occupation.
A literary novel follows a conflicted preacher.
Foy Davis, a Baptist minister who has grown up in Texas, decides in 2005 that he will no longer be a pastor. But Foy leaves his church in San Antonio under a shadow (“They didn’t fire him, but he didn’t exactly quit either”). Adding to his problems is his divorce from his wife some two days prior. He decides he will use his newfound freedom to travel to the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. The trip provides him with a mix of emotions, although he doesn’t do anything too crazy. The reader is then taken to Foy’s past, exploring time periods like his awkward middle-school experience in Houston and a weak attempt, in his college years, to convert strangers in Wisconsin. Then there are Foy’s preaching days. With his Nerf football his constant office companion and his willingness to say “fuck” (at least in private conversations), he sports a ministering style that strikes a balance. He is not too hip to arouse suspicion but not so stale that parishioners find him boring. He is also willing to contemplate big-picture items like what it means to truly believe in God. Although scenes from his youth provide vivid glimpses of the man Foy would become, both Atkinson’s (RealLivePreacher.com, 2013, etc.) book and his protagonist are at their best when tackling subjects that cannot easily be explained away with Scripture. At one point, Foy is summoned to a hospital room where a dying church deacon admits that he doesn’t believe in “the God stuff,” saying, “God becomin’ a little baby born in a manger. That sounds like somethin’ the Mormons would make up.” This would be a tough situation for anyone, but the man pinned with defending “the God stuff” is certainly in a tight spot. It is through such portions that the reader gets true insight into the life of a holy man. Giving a weekly sermon and comforting believers in need may seem easy enough, but what is one to do when those worshippers are more complex than expected? What happens when the sermonizers have their own doubts?
An inviting account of one man’s ambivalence toward his own faith and occupation.Pub Date: March 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9967535-5-5
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Material Media LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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