A seamless blend of snark and sincerity.
In Kerney’s debut, a sanctimonious evangelical teen reads Darwin and begins to question her beliefs.
As an abstinence-devoted, church-going Bible Quiz Champion in Slow Rapids, Ind., 14-year-old Mel seems like the ideal evangelical Christian girl—particularly compared with her heathen siblings. Her older sister, Kyle, has an abusive boyfriend, a child out of wedlock and another one possibly on the way. Her brother Jared failed an Air Force drug test and now lives in Mel’s parents’ basement and works at a local factory, forgoing church altogether. But even Mel has her vices: Though she papers her school with pro-abstinence flyers and punches a girl on the school bus for showcasing her make-out sessions, she also is eager to cut out the sides of her cotton underwear to mimic the thongs that her (unsaved) friend Beth shows her in a contraband Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. Mel’s virtues are further tested when she wins a scholarship to an academic summer camp and finds the forbidden Darwin on her reading list. Curiosity gets the best of her, and promising herself that she will “save” Beth by taking her to the annual church conversion play, she snags a copy of The Origin of Species from Beth’s living room. As she reads, she finds to her surprise that Darwin’s words make sense to her—perhaps even more sense than her sin-obsessed parents and the charming Pastor Lyle at the church. And when Mel uncovers hard evidence that even her parents aren’t quite as pious as she had thought, she begins to understand that both her family and her church are entrenched in deep hypocrisy. Much to Kerney’s credit, there is no overblown happy ending—Mel’s ability to come to terms with her family, her upbringing and her religion is authentically complicated and clumsy.
A seamless blend of snark and sincerity.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2006
ISBN: 0-15-603145-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
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
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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