Book Reviews

Summary: An alternate history of the midwest in the 1920s.

This is the third novel of Francis Spufford that I have read. They have all been historical fiction of one sort or another. Golden Hill was set in 1746 New York City and has a plot twist at the very end that really made the book. It was well written and tightly plotted, but that main twist and some other minor plots twists moved the book from good to excellent. Light Perpetual is also an alternative history that follows a group of children who were killed by a German rocket in WWII as if they had not died. My only real complaint about the book is that the book could have been written as a straight novel without the alternate history. I bring that up because Cahokia Jazz does not have that problem.

Cahokia Jazz is set in the 1920s. The alternative history is not really explained well, but as I explored other reviews, I discovered that the central change is that a less virulent form of small pox was introduced by early Spanish explorers and that instead of approximately 90% of Native Americans at the time dying from European diseases, a much smaller percentage died. The result is that by the 1920s, instead of a minuscule Native American population, there is really three cultural groupings in this midwestern city that is in roughly the same area as St Louis. The book opens with a note telling the reader that there are three racial/ethnic groups in the book and the book uses the local terms to describe them. They are, takouma (Native Americans), takata (European Americans), and taklousa (African Americans). I knew in my head the terms and I knew by the story which group was which in terms of cultural power and significance, but I think his renaming these racial/ethnic terms was a savvy way to disguise some of the plot points.

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Summary: Despite its age, this is still one of the best biographies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bethge was one of Bonhoeffer’s students at Finkenwalde, and became his closest friend and he was the one responsible for compiling Letters and Papers from Prison, the book that made Bonhoeffer a widely known theologian. 

It took me almost two months to finish, but Eberhard Bethge’s biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, despite being over 50 years old, is still well worth reading. I read the first edition, published in English in 1970 because that was the edition my library had. But I would recommend picking up the 2000 edition from Fortress Press because the first edition was slightly abridged at only 867 pages, compared to 1068 pages in the revised edition.

If you are new to Bonhoeffer, I think Charles Marsh’s biography is the best introduction, but Bethge’s is the most complete. That makes sense because it is the longest by quite a bit. Marsh’s biography is 528 pages, Metaxes biography (which I do not recommend) is 640 pages, Schlingensiepen’s biography is 470. It isn’t just that this biography is longer, although that is part of it, but this biography is just more comprehensive of areas that the others just do not get to.

Bethge was friend and student of Bonhoeffer’s. He was conscripted into the German army for a time, and later was also imprisoned because of his connection to the Bonhoeffer family. (He married Bonhoeffer’s niece and her father was part of the resistance movement that Bonhoeffer was also connected to.) I think that Marsh handles Bonhoeffer’s childhood and early development better than Bethge, but especially from 1932 on, Bethge is much more detailed, and much more focused on the way that German church’s response to Hitler influenced Bonhoeffer’s life. Other biographies hit the major developments and life events, but Bethge talks about ways church politics and especially the politics of the global ecumenical movement worked in a level of detail and nuance that was helpful to me to understand the particulars. But I also think that level of detail is probably too much for those who are new to Bonhoeffer.

My rough evaluation of a biography is that if a biography makes me want to read more by or about a figure, then it is doing its job. After finishing Bethge’s biography, I am going to read a biography of Bethge and a biography of Bishop Bell that I have. I also want to read the complete Letters and Papers from Prison. I have read portions, but not all. And the edition that I have is 614 pages compared to the earlier editions that were around 400 pages. There is the Bonhoeffer’s Works edition that is 776 pages (but I think that is supplementary material not additional main content.)

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Summary: Third in the series, Barefoot starts immediately after Two Steps Forward.

The four friends continue to discover more about themselves and their relationship with others and God as the series progresses.

I accidentally found out a significant plot point of Barefoot as I was trying to figure out the right order of the books, so I knew going in what was going to happen. I am not going to reveal that here, but I will say, don’t read about book four (An Extra Mile) before you finish Barefoot or you will find that spoiler as well.

I stayed up way past my bedtime finishing Barefoot up. I am not completely sure why I did that because I knew what was going to happen. But I wanted the story to get there.

In many ways, Barefoot moved the broader story along, but did not resolve any of the storylines so it is hard to talk about anything new happening in the series. Each of the characters continued along the path that they were going. Each of the characters discovered things about themselves that the reader was well aware of, but the characters hadn’t quite put together on their own. (One of the reasons that I am such a fan of spiritual direction is that it is easy for you as an individual to be blind to a situation that an outside observer can see clearly. And this series illustrates how that works well.)

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Summary: A stand alone sci-fi novel set in the same universe as the Ancillary series, multiple people come together by change to grapple with belonging. 

As I have said many times, I like sci-fi because it is “about something.” The ideas don’t have to hit you over the head, it is often better if they don’t, but sci-fi is particularly helpful at looking at the ways that culture and perspective shape our world.

Translation State is set in the same world as the Ancillary series, but it is completely stand alone. You don’t have to have read the other books, but you will have insight into the cultures of the different groups and the politics of the universe if you have read the earlier series.

This is a book that can be thought to be about several things simultaneously in a way that makes it not clearly about any one thing in particular. One language does not have gender, so our conception of gender is not present in that language. Other alien species have different ways of procreation which has implications for how their society is set up. There are also different perspectives on what it means to be an individual. In the case of AI machines that have ancillaries, there is not “an individual” but a part of a whole.

I don’t want to give away plot point more than necessary because this is one of those books where the reader isn’t supposed to understand what is going on until midway through the book then the different threads start to come together. There are a mix of human and non-human characters who for one reason or another do not fit in with expectations. It is pretty easy to read rugged individualism into this framing, and that isn’t entire wrong, but there is also a reading about sexual or other minorities who are pressed into behavior as if they were part of the majority group. In the end, it is the difference that saves the day, as I not surprising.

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Summary: Picking up right where Sensible Shoes left off, the four friends continue to find their way in the world and to find God more clearly. 

Sensible Shoes is one of those series that is really one long story broken up into different books because no one would buy a 1500 or so odd page book. The second book starts right after the first book. There is a clear conclusion, but it also was clear that the story would keep moving at the end of the first book.

As I said in my post on Sensible Shoes, one of the problems of writing about spiritual formation is that it is incredibly slow and the problem of writing about it is that it either seems magically fast or boringly slow. Part of what Brown is doing here is to make sure that the reader understands that this is not a one way path toward growth.

But I do think that one of the other problems here is that spiritual growth is inherently dependent upon discernment because discernment is part of how we understand the work of the spirit in our lives. And in my estimation, discernment can bring us to different conclusion because we are different people. And I think at least some of the discernment that happens in these books is discernment I would question. It may be that one particular case of discernment that I question was a red herring where the characters didn’t act as well as she should have in the situation but over time did come to a place of forgiveness toward another character.

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Summary: An exploration of the Catholic Church and its history and future around racial justice. 

Some books on Catholic thought are about the universal (catholic) church but written from the perspective of a Catholic thinking. While other books on Catholic thought are particularly about what it means to be Catholic in particular. This is the latter not the former. As a non-Catholic reading it, there are still helpful ideas and considerations that can be used outside of the Catholic Church. The chapter on culture is particularly helpful in part because the Catholic Church is so universal that it (or at least parts of it) have thought deeply about how culture and faith work together.

Other parts of the book, history and the discussion of what it means to be a Black Catholic theologian in the US, are more particular and those parts are not as immediately applicable for those who are not Catholic (or Black). But there is still value in understanding particularity. Particularity, when you can understand it allow you to see how to think and act, or at least how others have attempted to think and act, and then to see if those process of thinking and acting can be helpful for you in a different context.

This is also a book written at a particular time, 2010. That time was very particular. Obama had been elected president. And the very public deaths of Black people (mostly men) that eventually gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement had not started. Massingale was writing with tempered hope. He was well aware that the idealism of many who thought we were in a “post-racial” world was not true. But he also was aware that there had been improvements within his lifetime both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Fifteen years later, and not only Benedict, and Francis, have passed away, but the American Catholic Church is in an even deeper sense of division as a result of the continued fall out of the abuse crisis, the politics of Trump, the strain theologically between reformers and traditionalists and other issues. However, I am not sure that much of the discussion in the book is really significantly different.

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Summary: A novel about spiritual formation. 

I am a bit cynical about Christian novels. It isn’t that I do not know that good Christian novels exist, I know they do. Many Christian novels are among my favorite novels. But I also know that there are a very large number of novels that are classified as Christian, which are not focused on art, but on propaganda. I am most opposed to the Christian novel as propaganda, but a second category, Christian novel as “safe” is nearly as bad. It is not that I think that everyone should read every type of novel or that appropriate boundaries should not exist for the content within novels. But “safe” should not be the primary category for writing a novel.

Novels are relatively recent inventions. Novels continue to evolve and change. Novels communicate emotion, empathy, stories, perspectives which we do not have, windows into the lives of others which we do not live. There is a role for communicating information in the novel, but it isn’t a primary role for novels.

I have been intentionally trying to read fiction every day this year. I have not been perfect in that, but I have read a lot more fiction this year than I have in many years. That has in part forced me to find fiction to read. As a spiritual director, I was aware that the Sensible Shoes series existed. But it was not until hearing a podcast interview with the author that I decided to pick up this first book.

Sensible Shoes is about four different women who meet at a spiritual formation workshop. The facilitator of the workshop is a spiritual director. The women sit together by chance, but they become friends over the several months of the class and the reader comes to know not just their relationship with each other and God, but also their history and background that has led them to where they are.

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Summary: A retelling of Huck Finn from Jim’s viewpoint.

While I have read some of Mark Twain’s books, I have never read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Almost all of my background for the story of Huck Finn is from the 1968-69 live action and animation series, “The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The show used three live action characters who played Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, but was otherwise entirely animated. You can see an example here. My memory is pretty vague, but I remember it being almost entirely fantasy. The children found magical creatures as they took a raft down the Mississippi. That was poor preparation for reading James, a retelling of Huck Finn through the perspective of Jim.

My perception prior to reading was that Jim was a slave about the same age as Huck Finn, but once I was a little way into the book I check and the original book had Jim/James in his late 20s. The story keeps to the outline of Huck Finn. Jim runs away to keep from being sold away from his wife and daughter. While at the same time and unrelated, Huck Finn fakes his death to get away from his abusive and alcoholic father.

Jim and Huck Finn find one another while they are both hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. Jim realizes that he will be blamed for Huck’s death, and at the same time knows that Huck is too young to care for himself and so takes Huck under his care as they try to get away. The book starts out in Hannibal, IL. I had previously assumed Hannibal, MO was further south, but it is 100 miles due west of Springfield IL. Missouri was a slave state and while it would have taken longer to get to than today, Springfield was where Abraham Lincoln was based prior to his election as president. The vague initial plan was to take the Mississippi River south to the Ohio River (about 200 miles) and escape to freedom.

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Summary: An AI seeks justice.

I have been intentionally trying to read at least some fiction every day this year. I blew through this trilogy and I am going to just write one review for the trilogy as a whole.

The series intentionally starts leaving the reader in the dark about what is really going on. The story slowly unwinds and it is really not until the last third of the book that everything that the reader needs to know is revealed.

The main character is seeking revenge. But very early in the book, she is distracted when she runs across someone she knows dying in the snow. She save them and then feels an obligation along with her desire for revenge.

The world building is well done. This is a classic space opera trilogy. The first book has all the vibes of a western or left for dead spy novel but with a space setting. There is an Asian/British feel to some of the culture that is accented even more in later book. An emotionally reserved culture, lots of tea, colonialism are all very common.  It took a little while to understand, but the culture of the main characters does not distinguish genders, so everyone is “she” in that language, but in other languages, there are gender distinctions.

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Summary: A novel about the English mystic Margery Kempe, the author of what is usually considered the first autobiography written in English. 

I have been intentionally trying to read fiction every day and this has led to me reading a lot more fiction this year. Revelations is about Margery Kempe (c1373-1438?). This is a novel based on her life, roughly from her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe.

In that autobiography she details her many visions of Jesus or other members of the trinity as she went on various pilgrimages, including to the Holy Land. But that autobiography also details her many pregnancies and children and the abuse (and rape) from her husband. She suffered what we would now label postpartum depression and has the first of her visions of Jesus after the birth of her first child. And it is believed that she has 14-15 pregnancies with multiple children dying in infancy or still births.

She negotiated a “chaste marriage” and soon after left her husband (and children) when she was about 43. She meets Julian of Norwich and has extended conversations with her. Julian was also a mystic and author and the novel expands on that connection.

Obviously, while there is source material, much of the book is fictionalized. Unintentionally, this is another book on the Love of God that is a connection between Greg Boyle’s Cherished Belonging and the novel Sensible Shoes and John Armstrong’s The Transforming Fire of Divine Love: My Long, Slow Journey into the Love of God (which I am still reading.) This unintentional theme of God’s love throughout my reading this spring has made me think more about how the mystical experience of God’s love matters to the church and to those who never have a mystical experience of God’s love.

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