Devilishly entertaining fantasy fare for people of faith, from the creator of the Dorsetville series of miraculous tales (On...
Is Lucifer lurking in L.L. Bean land? In this nifty metaphysical thriller, a hunky exorcist and a passel of ghostbusting gal pals combat Dark Forces invading a picture-perfect Yankee hamlet.
St. Francis Xavier parish is losing pastors. Over the years, three freaked priests have fled, having beheld Sights Too Terrible To Speak Of. Enter redoubtable replacement Father Rich Melos, who’s both fearless of Satan and Thornbirds-cute. Jane Edwell, plucky proprietor of the Sip and Sit Café, joins Melos in his bid to blast open the malefic mystery. A 40ish gamine with a jogger’s hardbody, she’s psychically gifted, her sixth sense an uncanny after-effect of her surviving a car crash that killed her family when she was a teen. Jane and the Church Hookers—soccer moms who meet to handcraft folk-art rugs—become demon detectives while sparing time to flirt harmlessly with the padre and exchange benign gossip with other un-desperate housewives. Melos, driven by the memory of his first exorcism of a 12-year-old gorgeous Italian bambina (one of the novel’s truly terrifying scenes), gets down to soul-saving business while chastely boyfriending the women. A delightful storyteller with an eye for quotidian detail (the Hookers shop at T.J. Maxx and adore Oprah), Valentine turns in a smarter Touched by an Angel. It’s the kind of determinedly edifying fiction that recalls G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown whodunits or Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo tales, sweet fluff once beloved of pre-Vatican II Catholics. Valentine’s heroic priest-protagonist is a nice novelty and her heroines are engagingly down-to-earth.
Devilishly entertaining fantasy fare for people of faith, from the creator of the Dorsetville series of miraculous tales (On a Wing and a Prayer, 2005, etc.).Pub Date: June 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51202-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Image/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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