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The novelist pens her first work of nonfiction here with an account of her topsy-turvy life and friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, who was first a poet and always a head-, heart-, and handful. The two met in college, lived together at the Iowa Writers Workship, and basically did life together, regardless of whether they were in the same place.
And they were not often in the same place, be it NYC vs. Nashville or love vs. self-pity. Grealy did have viable complaints in how doctors had treated her since age 10, as she had a rare cancer of the jaw bone that always meant reconstructive surgery. Her appearance was always changing; she could never get used to or accepting of her own body, of her very own face. (That is the subject of Grealy's acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, about which my interest is now piqued.)
Patchett may be a better novelist than a memoirist. I don't know, as I haven't read Bel Canto, The Patron Saint of Liars, or any of her others. This retelling of their public and private moments - of their triumphs and travails in romantic, personal, and professional realms, and in that order of seeming importance - is good and noble to honor the memory of Grealy. (She died in NYC a few years ago of a suicide or accidental overdose, depending on whom you ask.)
The book is sympathetic to Grealy largely, but Patchett's resolve admittedly waned after 12-15 years of seeing her friend's self-destructive behavior. "You know one day I'll leave you over this," she told Grealy of her heroin addiction. "Oh, I know," came the ambivalent reply.
Grealy's family, specifically her sister, has lashed out at Patchett's take on their own, and understandably. Grealy does not come off as a grateful or benevolent person in this book. Yes, she's had a uniquely rough life, and since a young age, but she's whiny, sexed-up, and generally inconsiderate of the tolls that her words and ways are taking on herself and others. Yes, she ravished friends with money and gifts. But she was also wasteful with her success and income and fame; she squandered a lot. One finishes the read thinking Patchett deserves a medal for sticking by Grealy's side as long as she did.
This book is touching and funny and devastating at times - her cancer treatments are truly horrifying - but the title seems a misnomer. Not sure what's to be gleaned from the book about truth and beauty exactly. I love reading about writers' interactions and how they feed off of each other professionally and personally, and some of that's here, but I'm not sure what's beautiful about a life that's by turns self-aggrandizing and self-destroying.
Maybe Grealy's family's beef is warranted. Maybe this didn't need to be written, at least not so soon after her demise. Still, Patchett's firsthand take is sometimes intriguing and always readable. It was never going to be enough, their friendship. Lucy Grealy's end was going to be tragic no matter what, it seemed, and because she'd have it no other way.
JS
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Might I recommend GoodReads.com? My profile there is linked just above this note.
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This is the fictionalization of the life of Godric, a pirate and thief turned saint. Buechner is at his best here in this bawdy, creative account that reaped him a Pulitzer nomination.
Godric is a sympathetic man but not always good. He instructs his scribe to write his story accordingly, to avoid glowing descriptions that would ever win him praise. One can't help but be captivated by the story, though. His (fictional) life and relationships are intriguing and well worth the read.
Injections of Buechner's own family dynamics (especially father-son) are gripping in the early going and again later as certain persons reappear. The prose is eloquent and thoughtful.
Opening line:
"Five friends had I, and two of them snakes."
JS
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Robinson's prose is elegant and simple. Her characters are the same. John Ames reminded me of a 77-year-old Congregationalist minister version of Atticus Finch. It's set up as a 240-page letter from Ames to his 7-year-old son by a much younger wife who Ames married late in his own existence.
If this doesn't sound fantastic, trust me, you don't want to miss the beauty of this book. I can't do it the slightest justice. It's just gripping. And it won a Pulitzer if that does it for you.
Opening line:
"I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord,
and you said, Why, and I said Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old."
JS
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| Don't confuse this book with the film Jesus Camp (although there are some strikingly similar themes like hope, redemption, anti-abortion, fundamentalist American (read: cultural) evangelicalism, and children. If you've not seen the movie, I recommend it. It is not, however, the purpose of this review.
Jesus Land is the hard-hitting memoir of Julia Scheeres, daughter to a distant and heartless mother who writes long letters to missionaries in faraway lands and a doctor father who is absent for a good portion of the beginning of the book and whose rage mimics that of the sea. Julia is the white sister to David and Jerome, black boys whom her parents adopted in their own twisted version of Christ-like suffering and martyrdom near Lafayette, Indiana.
Christian culture permeates her reflection and not a single bit of it is positive. Memories of sappy Sandy Patti lyrics waft throughout the house while one of her brothers is beaten. Boring, irrelevant Sunday morning experiences that many who grew up going to church will be able to relate with. The reform school which Julia and David are sent to is portrayed with two strong and conflicting messages. A banner hangs over the headmaster's desk that reads "I am the Potter you are the clay" and a common quotation of one of wise King Solomon's Proverbs "Refrain not from chastening a child; for if thou beat him with a rod he shall not die. For thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from Hell" is delivered just before a teacher punches out a defiant student.
Not all the violence in this story is physical. Race, sex, and abuse are bluntly described with a detached air of a victim who has left her body inn order to escape the pain.
The school described in this book is in the Dominican Republic but there is a branch of it in Marion, Indiana as well. The local connection and a review in Indianapolis Monthly drew me to this book. The compelling storytelling and some graphic descriptions caused me to care about little Julia and made me want to read on to see this story through to conclusion with the hope that someway, somehow life would be different for these children.
The epilogue is compelling and a wonderful conclusion to such a work. Allow this excerpt to help you understand the tone and power behind a book like this:
I believe my parents had good intentions when they adopted my brothers, but good intentions go awry, as with missionaries bent on saving souls who obliterate entire tribal cultures in the process. Or former juvenile delinquents who find Jesus and decide to start reform schools.
Strong and poignant, this story is a sad testimony of a broken world and the rubble that is left behind by those in the Church who do not realize that they are blindly riding on a a bulldozer for Jesus and ignoring all the rest of the world.
jem
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| There’s a growing problem in the evangelical church. Over the last 150 years or so, evangelicals have argued about how to interpret the Old Testament and how it influences our lives. Some groups will even argue that they „are not interpreting,“ but that they are simply reading the Bible and directly applying what it says. Usually, it does not take much for us to pick apart this reading: a few questions about why some Old Testament teachings are maintained and others are not (teachings on what to wear, dealing with bodily fluids). Yet there is still an insistence that if you can’t read the Bible and take it as literal truth, then you are treating the Bible like any other book and it is therefore no longer the divine word of God.
Another issue here then is how the New Testament treats the Old Testament. It doesn’t take much digging to see where the Bible seems to contradict itself between the Testaments or even from book to book. A desire to avoid these discrepancies often leads to a pick and choose theology, where a reader will only use verses that aid his or her arguments and ignore the rest as not applicable instead of engaging in the more vigorous thought the Bible should evoke.
Enns offers an excellent starting point for handling the Old Testament. Instead of giving a cut and dry answer to which interpretation of the Bible is correct, Enns offers a platform which aids discussion about interpretation.
First, Enns outlines why evangelicals tend to shy away from engaging in this discussion: The Bible’s uniqueness, that is the expectation that the Bible not share any similarities with other texts of the same period. Another topis is the Bible’s integrity, or its trustworthiness. Here he addresses the question of how we expect the Bible to speak to us, that is, as a source of one clear voice . And finally, Enns deals with the question of interpretation, that is how the New Testament seems to take Old Testament ideas completely out of context. Enns deals with each of these questions in the following three chapters, highlighting the Bible’s position in history as a text being written and a text being read.
While the idea of approaching the Bible as a text may make some evangelicals balk, the author answers the question lurking in many of our minds: if you are just going to treat the Bible as a text, then that means you are saying it’s not the word of God. The helpful analogy of the Bible as God’s word incarnate reminds us of just what the Bible is—not simply a text to be read, but one to be interpreted. The Bible, so the argument goes, is not half text and half divine, but all text and all divine, just as confessing Christians will agree that Jesus is not half man and half God, but God incarnate, that is to say both man and God. And just as Christ became flesh to show us the way, so the Word became book to show us the way. This analogy should be kept in mind while reading this book.
I very much enjoyed reading this book, it even inspired me to spend a little more time in God’s word. Where I had fallen into the trap of thinking that I already knew what all the stories were about, I now realize that every time I encounter scripture, I’m reading a book that always applies to my life. The Bible is a living and breathing incarnation, after all.
e
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