A case of a reporter’s objectivity failing the needs of fiction.
Marriage to the man at the pulpit is an ordeal of biblical proportions for a trio of wives in this uneven debut from former Time reporter Cullen.
Ruthie and Jerry fulfill our expectations of New Yorkers—he works in finance, she in PR, and they live busy lives filled with takeout and friends. Then Jerry is called to God. Ruthie, a lapsed Catholic, is stunned but supportive when Jerry announces he is quitting Wall Street to work for an evangelical megachurch in Georgia. She always knew Jerry was spiritual (after all, they met while he was a theology student), but their religious differences seemed irrelevant to their urban life. Soon enough, the two are on the campus of the Greenleaf Church, where staff and parishioners are encouraged to drive green hybrids, use the church’s store and cafe, enjoy the Christian-themed yoga studio and enroll the kids in their day care. Ruthie and Jerry are housed in the same gated community where the church’s charismatic leader, Aaron Green, and his wife, Candace, live. Ruthie is strangely nonplused by their move to a Southern-style Stepford and is in fact impressed by first lady Candace. While Jerry is turning into Pastor Green’s right-hand man, Ruthie makes friends with Ginger, Candace and Aaron’s daughter-in-law. Ginger is often alone with her two small children (while her husband happily jets around the world on disaster relief missions), at the mercy of Candace’s haughty commands. When Ginger’s past (an Internet porn career before she was saved and married) comes to light, Candace shows everyone how to play hardball. Meanwhile, Ruthie fears that she and Jerry are drifting apart and that he is seeing the choir’s lead singer, a true believer, which is something Ruthie will never be. Though Cullen’s story occasionally feels like a juicy secret revealed, the novel lacks a consistent authorial point of view. Filled with Bible verses and an insider’s unquestioning acceptance of evangelicalism (the novel could do well in the Christian fiction market), it fails to fully examine Ruthie’s role as outsider until the end.
A case of a reporter’s objectivity failing the needs of fiction.Pub Date: April 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-452-29882-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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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