A dictionary-definition specimen of preaching to the choir, and one that begs yet another question: Is it unkosher to be so...
If you use Jesus as a character in a novel, do you have to pay him royalties?
It’s not spoiling the story—it’s all right there in the latter pages of the New Testament—to reveal that in LaHaye and Parshall’s (Thunder of Heaven, 2011, etc.) latest exercise in fundamentalist fiction, the brink of chaos of the title inaugurates a time when every good person on the planet can be found “worshipping and singing to the One who had ransomed them. Their Champion. Their Lord.” There’s no need to ask who the capitalized Person in question is. If you’re one of LaHaye’s legion of followers, then you won’t need to ask who supersecret agent Joshua Jordan, he of the double Old Testament moniker, is either. Jordan’s brief in this latest is to thwart the ambitions of the very, very bad secularists in power (“Let me tell you, those folks in power, including our president, really are bogeymen”) and the even worse secularist who is rising to attain world rule: “His global regulations against climate change,” the authors tell us, “have industries around the world being monitored by his environmental police.” Of course, in the fun worldview of the apocalyptic set, there’s no such thing as climate change, and anyone who hampers the desire of a corporation to do whatever it wants to is an agent of the Antichrist. When Jordan isn’t chasing after this impeccably groomed baddie, he’s jetting off to the Middle East to prep the world for the end of days. That’s work that can make a person tired, and Jordan’s wearisome banter is a mark. As with formula fiction since before the dawn of time, no one in these pages ever speaks like anyone in real life does. But why would they need to, when they’re floating rapturously up into the clouds?
A dictionary-definition specimen of preaching to the choir, and one that begs yet another question: Is it unkosher to be so ham-fisted?Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-310-31881-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Zondervan
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Old wounds are healed and new loves found on Starbridge Close in this, the final novel in the bestselling sextet (Glittering Images, 1987, Mystical Paths, 1992, et al.), which, like its predecessors, transforms the private lives of English high churchmen into an absorbing novel of intrigue and mysteries, divine and temporal. In a nice symmetrical touch, the narrator is again Dr. Charles Ashworth, whose adventures began the series. Now in his 80s, Ashworth, prompted by the obituary of old nemesis Neville Aysgarth, recalls the events of ``the year of my third catastrophe.'' That year is 1965, and Ashworth is a bishop ``famous for defending tradition at a time when all traditions were under attack.'' Such rigid adherence to absolute truths is asking for trouble, and sure enough trouble is soon on its way. An elderly homosexual vicar is found beaten up; to avoid scandal, Ashworth hides the old man's porn collection from the police; son Michael threatens to marry a most unsuitable girl; Aysgarth is being suspiciously cagey about the Cathedral fund-raising accounts; and Lyle, Ashworth's beloved wife, suddenly dies. As Ashworth responds to these crises, grief and the knowledge that he had not helped Lyle when she needed it makes him behave erratically. He sleeps with a widow, drinks too much, quarrels with his sons and Aysgarth. He has a terrifying encounter in the Cathedral, which convinces him it is possessed by demons. But spiritual peace and new love—an old flame from the past turns up—only come to the bishop when charismatic Lewis Hall conducts a dramatic exorcism that reveals the Cathedral's demons to be Ashworth's long-suppressed guilt, and when aging mystic Jon Darrow elicits confessions from both Aysgarth and Ashworth. A superb climax to a sequence that has triumphantly vindicated that ill-assorted gang of four—plot, prayer, perfidy, and priests. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41206-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
Japanese writer Endo (The Final Martyrs, 1994, etc.) continues his exploration of faith and anomie—in a deceptively simple and well-told story of spiritual inquiry that movingly explores all the big questions. The opening pages briefly introduce four people who will shortly, for varying reasons, join a Japanese tour-group travelling to India: Isobe, a businessman whose deceased wife, believing she would ``be reborn somewhere in this world,'' made him promise he would look for her; Mitsuko, a volunteer at the dead woman's hospital, who is troubled by her own past and her obsession with a former classmate; retired industrialist Kiguchi, still haunted by wartime memories of Burma's notorious Highway of Death; and Numanda, a gentle writer of children's books who wants to repay his debt to the bird that saved his life when he was desperately ill. The book investigates the role religion plays in contemporary Japan, where relatives attending a funeral politely question the Buddhist priest conducting the service, while ``not one of them really believed anything the priest was saying.'' As the trip gets under way, more disquiets are explored: Isobe can't forget how he ignored his wife when she was alive; Mitsuko hungers for love but can't abandon her cynicism; Kiguchi recalls a fellow veteran who saved his life by eating human flesh but then drank himself to death trying to forget what he had done; and Numanda muses on the central role nature has played in his life. The four finally experience their epiphanies on the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, where the old and afflicted come to die and the faithful immerse themselves in the river. In this richly detailed setting, Endo offers a faith that, using the river as metaphor, comfortingly blends all the great religions together. Conflicts a bit too neatly resolved, but saved from mawkishness by strong and original characters.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8112-1289-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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