A dense, religiously themed tale that’s wonderfully liberated by faith, sexuality, and wanderlust.
A young man with a troubled past seeks to reconcile with his family and his convictions.
Bell’s debut chronicles the adolescence of Billy Lymon, a Black South Jersey orphan who, as the novel opens in 1974, plans his own suicide as an escape from the stifling confines of his foster family’s farmhouse. Despite a relatively happy childhood, he flunked out of college early. At the age of 19, Billy foresees his “dead-end life” as a gay Black man in racist America with a disapproving family. His fatal master plan is overshadowed by his foster mother. She confesses that his birth mother, while a teenager pregnant with him, was murdered by an unhinged woman who felt she could more appropriately raise him. After hearing this crushing news, he becomes distracted by witchy rituals, memories of his drug-addled past, and the acceptance of himself as a gay man despite a firm belief in God and a desire for spiritual intervention. In a surprise twist, Billy becomes born again and, after hearing God’s spectral guidance, begins planning a California relocation. But he lands in New York City, where Billy plays “the role of a good Christian” as he navigates the urban landscape’s seedier side and mingles with a downtrodden community. This inner-city education dictates the work’s second part and less compellingly continues Billy’s search for personal peace and his struggle to harmonize the queer and pious parts of himself. In the book’s chapterless format, the serviceable narration has a tendency to sermonize and thus lose focus and direction, often making the tale more of a religious text than a story about a man’s quest for contentment. In addition, Billy’s proselytizing to an effeminate gay man with a lisp strikes a sour note. While a bit bloated and heavily infused with biblical and Christian references, Bell’s fusion of queerness with religion is intriguing in its attempt to reconcile the gap between the two historically disparate factions. Readers who ascribe to both affiliations will find a uniquely inspiring and enlightening reading experience and a perspective rarely found in contemporary gay novels. It’s an odd literary combination that somehow, in the New Jersey author’s narrative hands, successfully affords its character personal freedom and redemption.
A dense, religiously themed tale that’s wonderfully liberated by faith, sexuality, and wanderlust.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-105-55098-0
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Lulu.com
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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