A winningly thoughtful, metafictional exploration of the modern nature of Christianity.
A writer embarks on a road trip with a passenger claiming to be Jesus.
This latest novel from Merullo works from the same template as his beloved 2007 hit, Breakfast With Buddha. An author named Eddie Valpolicella (a stand-in for Merullo) picks up a hitchhiker in the spring of 2018 who’s seeking a ride to Arkansas. Eddie is headed that way as the guest of a Protestant church wanting him to give a book talk. His hitchhiker immediately tells him that he is traveling there in order to attend a talk by his favorite author, Eddie Valpolicella. Eddie instantly suspects a prank (or worse), but the man, who introduces himself as “Jesus the Christ,” convinces the author to give their shared company a try for just one day. Still, the whole project seems doomed. Eddie finds himself annoyed by the man he names “So-Called Jesus” and dumps him fairly early on—only to be reunited with the hitchhiker right away and reconciled to a long drive together. Prompted by the success of Eddie’s earlier works, the author’s agent has already urged him to do a book about meeting Jesus—but not the stereotypical Sunday school figure. “We need a new Jesus these days,” she tells Eddie. “Make him real.” This turns out to be easy for Eddie, who notices right away that So-Called Jesus isn’t always saintly. “He can’t be Jesus,” Eddie thinks, “because the real Jesus would never be so obnoxious.” What follows is a buddy/road-trip narrative that would have had Merullo burned in a public square during the first 1,900 years of Christianity.
So-Called Jesus agrees with Eddie’s agent. He wants the author to write a book about a different kind of Jesus, a work that will fill what he refers to as “the Gap” between the Gospels and the present day. Merullo is a long-standing, practiced hand at crafting narratives that are both hugely readable and genuinely thought-provoking, and the story of the growing relationship between his stand-in and So-Called Jesus makes for deeply captivating reading. The passenger consistently displays supernatural knowledge and abilities. But for a long time, Eddie is reluctant to, as he puts it, “surrender my logic and sense of normalcy” in order to accept that the hitchhiker is the real Jesus. Most of the narrative is mercifully free of the typical straw-man apologetics in favor of the “validity” of Christianity (although one of the most famous, that “even Einstein pointed to the meticulous design of everything…as evidence of some kind of Divine Intelligence,” is trotted out on cue). Instead, readers get a refreshingly complex, personal portrait of that promised “new Jesus”—wry, funny, knowing, and infinitely patient. This Jesus is less enigmatic and gnomish than Merullo’s Buddha—he’s far more of a pragmatic, working folks’ Messiah, a version very touchingly on display when the two travelers share a meal with a poor family in a West Virginia hollow. Even non-Christians will find this road trip intriguing.
A winningly thoughtful, metafictional exploration of the modern nature of Christianity.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73672-028-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: PFP Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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