A playful, Christian romp through an imaginative world.
Derowitsch’s (A New Global Ideal, 2016) allegorical novel follows a young man at a crossroads.
Kyle Redding—who is best described as ordinary—is a 17-year-old living in Salem, Oregon. The narrator explains the lack of much of a description for Kyle: “How do you really describe someone who is just about average in every way?” He befriends the new girl at school and thinks she has girlfriend potential. After Marah Deni rebuffs him, Kyle tries to kill himself. He doesn’t succeed, and a voice guides him to a street called Kingwood, where he embarks on a surreal adventure and meets many strange characters. The most sinister is a jewel-covered snake, aka Leviathan, though some call him the “Soul-Devourer.” Lucky for Kyle, there are plenty of people looking out for his best interest, including Clive, who’s hammering away at a typewriter. One need not know much about theology to figure out that a story that includes a combination of a cunning snake and a writer named Clive is likely to have something to do with Christianity. And so the reader is guided through a tale dotted with occasionally playful creatures (e.g., cartwheeling squirrels) and focused on the importance of understanding one’s true spiritual needs. Events move quickly, propelling Kyle to a new understanding. Watching Kyle’s growth gives the book its best moments. He is even shown the spiritual states of people he thinks he knows pretty well. Although these sights aren’t as punishing as Dante, they provide a lasting reminder that all that glitters isn’t gold, a reminder that works well in a story that, though threaded with silliness, is in the end very serious business. All told, such a combination makes the book’s message obvious but also digestible and even a little bit fun.
A playful, Christian romp through an imaginative world.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-7165-7
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2017
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
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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