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
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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