A clumsy spiritual allegory that makes bold claims about life and death.
Lukas’ (The Spirit Connection, 2014, etc.) spiritual novel tells the story of a carpenter and his angelic guide exploring the world of reincarnation.
On a desperate night in 2015, Phil Nash puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. His life has been rough since he was 10 and he had his first vision after witnessing a woman killed in a car wreck: “A silver cord appeared in the sky, and her misty likeness rose at an angle from her body and disappeared along the cord.” He’s been haunted by ghosts, despite the best efforts of doctors to find a medical cure. The visions cause tension in his eventual marriage to Pam, as does the collapse of the family contracting business. Phil gets injured on a subsequent job, forcing him to file for bankruptcy and leading to an addiction to scotch and pain meds. The final straw is getting a divorce notice from Pam. Instead of dying, however, Phil is visited by an angel named Karma sent by God to help save Phil’s soul. Karma shows Phil the life he should have had—that of a powerful medium. Together they explore Phil’s past lives to discover his true purpose. Lukas’ prose is simple and concise, giving readers the sense at times that they are reading a cozy children’s novel. The story structure is familiar—a troubled protagonist is shown the light by an otherworldly helper—and its didactic nature is hard to ignore. Some of Lukas’ ideas may prove a bit off-putting. When Phil asks about the moral nature of rapists and terrorists, Karma tells him: “Some people are born to hurt others just as most are born to be good. This is hard to understand, but those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, for example, planned with their guides before birth to depart on that day. They repaid karmic debts by accepting to pass in this manner.” Too flat to function as effective fiction, the book is unlikely to persuade many to Lukas’ view of the cosmos.
A clumsy spiritual allegory that makes bold claims about life and death.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71724-709-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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