A religious-themed comedy of errors that presents a wry yet ultimately affectionate look at the state of godliness today.
A gentle satire about one young man’s quest to find his spiritual identity.
When readers first meet teenager William James Tillit, the unlikely but good-hearted hero of Clatterbaugh’s debut novel, he’s in his bedroom in his aunt and uncle’s house, talking with God. But in Will’s case, God talks back to him directly—and often sarcastically. Will has been living with his aunt and uncle for most of his 19 years, but now, after obtaining a deferred admission to Tulane University, he’ll be traveling from Louisiana to East Texas to take a job working at the Galilee Theme Park run by the Rev. Shister. The prospect of the road trip excites him, although God is more phlegmatic about the whole idea, because Will is eager to experience the larger outside world. But his trip turns out to be far more adventurous than his highest hopes. Clatterbaugh expertly orchestrates a set of sometimes-funny, sometimes-touching, and always thought-provoking predicaments for Will, from attending a glitzy “mega-megachurch” whose motto is “Trust in the Lord—Guaranteed” (God himself is less than impressed) to meeting an agnostic hamster named Ham. Before Will can reach his theme park destination, he’s confronted by ultrazealous, psychotic doomsday preppers and captured by a fundamentalist militia group. As God puts it, the trip “sets a new standard in the broadening horizons department.” Along the way and seamlessly worked into the narrative, Will and his new friends and enemies manage to discuss many debate topics of current Christian theology, always in an energetic, approachable way. Clatterbaugh draws even the most outrageous characters with believable humanity, including God, whose running commentary on Will’s life is the comedic highlight of the book. Christians will love the strange concoction he serves up in these pages, and non-Christians will appreciate the evenhandedness of the many spiritual discussions.
A religious-themed comedy of errors that presents a wry yet ultimately affectionate look at the state of godliness today.Pub Date: June 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8302-8
Page Count: 318
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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