Identity by Ted Dekker

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Identity by Ted DekkerIt’s been quite a while since I read a novel by Ted Dekker, partly because my to-read pile is threatening to overwhelm me and partly because I was left somewhat flat by the second installment of his joint venture with Tosca Lee in the Book of Mortals. The jury is still out for me as to whether that series failed to grab me because I expected something to match the Circle or because what we got was a continuation of the Circle disguised as something new.

With that off my chest, book one of Eyes Wide Open is a winner so far. I say so far because Dekker is offering this novel in four installments. I enjoyed the frantic and escapist tale as it unfolded in this first installment. At the same time I had to continually work to get the bad taste out of my mouth about the marketing of this book. But more about that later.

Identity is the story of two characters, both seriously disconnected from the people and society around them. Christe Snow (17) is a young woman with a largely missing past, illustrated in the silver locket she wears that contains nothing but stock photos. Austin Hartt (19), her only real friend, is a prodigy. His life consists of the books that surround him, auditing classes at Harvard though he’s never enrolled, and the realization he may have a tumor threatening to destroy the intellect he so cherishes.

When Christie returns to an abandoned hotel basement to search for the cherished locket she somehow misplaced, she finds the fragile identity she so carefully protects threatened in ways even she, with all her insecurities, could have never imagined. First trapped in the abandoned basement she breaks through an old wall to find herself in the hallways of St. Matthews’s psychiatric ward. Soon she and then Austin who comes looking for her, find themselves trapped in a nightmare of different sorts. Both she and Austin are labeled as delusional patients with different names and their own identity effectively erased.

Since this is in essence only the first few chapters of what will be a complete novel, I will withhold questions about plot issues for now. This has a definite YA feel and since I don’t read a lot of Young Adult fiction I also won’t judge the story by its style. So far it’s a story that’s both entertaining and that compels you to keep turning pages to see what will happen to Christie and Austin as they struggled to hold on to their identity.

Now back to that lingering taste in my mouth I can’t quite get rid of. Besides being a writer, I am also involved in marketing and it is there that Eyes Wide Open uses a risky and to some a bit shady ploy. For weeks Dekker advertised this as a “ground breaking” method of telling story. Bold promises were made to recapture the story telling spirit of The Circle. In fact, I along with thousands of others signed up to receive Identity free. We were told it was the first of four books, each complete in itself, that would tell one unified story. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Identity ends with nothing complete in itself. I received at least three emails after signing up trumpeting the day I could enter information to receive my “free” copy of Identity. Never once, until that day came was it identified as a Kindle version of what amounts to the first six chapters of an incomplete book.

There is nothing wrong with using a serial approach to get a story out there. In fact, Dean Koontz did this quite effectively with Odd Interlude. The difference in the two is that Koontz never presented the three installments of Interlude as anything besides what they are: three parts to one story none of which stand alone in any way.

Eyes Wide Open is a good story but there is nothing ground breaking about how it is being doled out. Dickens was found in installments in London newspapers long before they became the classic books we know today. Same goes for Louisa May Alcott, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and a host of others.

Nevertheless, even though I am a marketer and understand how I was manipulated, I quickly bought the second installment of Dekker’s new work and am set to read Mirrors this afternoon. Perhaps, like Christie and Austin, I am a puppet in Ted Dekker’s maniacal hands. Or perhaps I just like a good story and so far this one is. Toothpaste can do wonders for a bad taste in one’s mouth but a book with no story cannot.

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image3 Identity by Ted DekkerTED DEKKER is a New York Times bestselling thriller author. Heralded as a “master of suspense” by Library Journal, Dekker has sold millions worldwide, establishing himself as one of the most widely recognized author brands.Ted Dekker’s fans are comprised of readers of all ages, backgrounds, and belief systems who love his compulsively readable stories, authentic characters, and universal and relatable themes that he explores from a unique point of view.

Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

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image thumb1 Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca LeeThursday Review
Forbidden (The Books of Mortals) by
Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
Fantasy – Faithwords 2011

While I’m finishing up reading and reviewing Book Two in the The Books of Mortals,  here is a review of Book One to bring readers up to speed. Check back next Thursday for a review of Mortal as we return to watch our world began to realize what life and death truly are.

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Imagine a world, our world, where every person on the planet is dead and doesn’t know it. Not zombies according to the current literary fad but rather a planet populated by people who are but shells of what they were created to be. Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee paints a picture of what might happen to a world so bent on eradicating its inner demons that it strips itself of all emotion. All that is, except fear.

Nearly five centuries have passed since a select group of scientists worked to tinker with humanity’s genetic code. Their discovery of a way to eliminate all emotions save fear gave way to a unified world ensured peace by the Order. But then, on one seemingly uneventful day, 24 year old Rom, finds his life altered forever thus beginning the first installment of what will ultimately be a trilogy called The Book of Mortals.

Ironically, Rom is a funeral singer. A funeral in which, like with most of his world, there is no body and no real sorrow. When Rom leaves the funeral he witnesses the unthinkable, a murder. As the old man who has been attacked is dying he gives Rom an ancient vial of blood that can grant something Rom did not even know he was lacking – life. The kind with real emotions: love, hate, jealousy, betrayal, passion, joy, ecstasy and despair. Real life. A life the world does not even know it is missing. To tell more would be to rob the reader of embarking on this journey with Rom and seeing it unvarnished through his eyes.

As with any fantasy or epic there is a fairly large cast of characters. Central to Book One is Rom, the ultimate unlikely hero. With no frame of reference to understand the emotions he now feels all he knows to do is to employ aid from the few friends he has. And he will need them because someone else has discovered the secret of emotions as well. Saric has to be one of the most unsympathetic villains ever created. His discovery of emotion only proves what man’s heart is capable of when all boundaries are removed. Other characters of note include Feyn the soon-to-be Sovereign of the world and sister of Saric, Avra, Rom’s best friend since childbirth, and though only introduced late in the story, the boy Jonathan.

Many collaborations fail miserably but not this one. Dekker’s imagination and sometimes almost maniacal focus on darkness and light coupled with Tosca Lee’s eloquence of prose is magical. Generally I can pick out who wrote what part of a novel but 50 pages into Forbidden I simply did not care. I was no longer reading a story by Ted Dekker or Tosca Lee. I was riding along side Rom, suddenly awakened to his former deadness and unsure if he can stand this new life on the ragged edge. Unsure if it is worth it.

This hero’s journey is summed up in an exchange between Rom and the man they call Book, a keeper of the truth of former times:

“Keep your words. This pain is no life.”
“You only feel pain because you’re alive, boy!” the keeper thundered. “This is the mystery of it. Life is lived on the ragged edge of the cliff. Fall off and you might die, but run from it and you are already dead!”

The setup at the end of Forbidden leaves one impatient for what follows. Even so it can stand alone with its powerful prose, intense action, compelling characters, and premise that leaves one wondering how many walking our world are really dead and don’t know it. It’s been seven years since Ted Dekker revolutionized a genre with Black, the first in his Circle series. I have no doubt a new revolution is about to begin.

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image thumb3 Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

TED DEKKER is a New York Times bestselling thriller author. Heralded as a “master of suspense” by Library Journal, Dekker has sold millions worldwide, establishing himself as one of the most widely recognized author brands.Ted Dekker’s fans are comprised of readers of all ages, backgrounds, and belief systems who love his compulsively readable stories, authentic characters, and universal and relatable themes that he explores from a unique point of view.

image thumb4 Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

TOSCA LEE  is the NY Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed DEMON: A MEMOIR, HAVAH: THE STORY OF EVE, and the Books of Mortals series with NY Times bestseller Ted Dekker: FORBIDDEN, MORTAL and SOVEREIGN (2013). Tosca received her B.A. in English and International Relations from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She also studied at Oxford University. In her spare time, Tosca enjoys adventure travel and makes her home in the Midwest.

Where will you be when Eternity Falls?

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image thumb2 Where will you be when Eternity Falls?Thursday Review
Eternity Falls by Kirk Outerbridge
Science Fiction – Marcher Lord Press

Rick Macey, a decorated war veteran, takes special jobs as a freelance private investigator. After a stellar career with the Department of Civil Defense and Intelligence he can now solve the crimes that interest him and pick and choose from jobs his old bosses throw his way.

When Rick first meets a new potential client by the name of Sheila Dunn it looks like this is a case he will pass on. He has seen it all, done it all, and feels no need to prove anything to anyone. Sheila, on the other hand, is Senior Executive Vice President of Gentech Corporation and expects everyone to be impressed with her.

At first Rick has little interest in the case but when he is shown a piece of evidence that belonged to a now dead movie starlet he changes his mind. The Bible, rarely seen these days, contains a name inscribed within its pages. And that name opens a floodgate of regrets from the past that Rick Macy cannot ignore.

In many ways Eternity Falls almost reminds one of the best of Raymond Chandler or Mickey Spillane. Rick Macy is a no-nonsense, time-worn, and take no prisoners kind of guy. Even his first name makes one wonder if the author didn’t watch Casablanca before naming the character. The action is relentless, the characters powerful but tortured, and the settings unforgettable.

But when Rick Blaine demanded Sam play that song one more time he just thought he had problems. You see Rick Macy is 140 years old, has fought in more wars than he can count, and has a nearly indestructible prosthetic body. And after over a century of fighting for his country has enough ghosts in his closet to drive 10 men mad.

Author Kirk Outerbridge does a masterful job of using this near future thriller to provide great escapist action while tackling some profound issues at the same time. Much of the plot revolves around Gentech Corporation’s Miracle Treatment, a drug that greatly extends the lifespan of those who use it. The death of a famous client requires Rick to find out if religious fanatics are trying to sabotage this product that offers eternal life?

10th crusader lg Where will you be when Eternity Falls?Eternity Falls and its sequel the 10th Crusader are certain to not please everyone. Consider these two comments from reviews at Amazon.com.

  • “I wish Amazon would create the sub-genre of “Christian Sci-Fi” so I can avoid them. I wish we did, indeed, have a Freedom from Deity law.”
  • “It was very hard to tell if this book was favorable to Christian beliefs or not.”

So one reader thinks a law named in the novel that bans any mention of God in the public marketplace is a good idea. Another is unsure if the book is even Christian at all.

To both I would say, your mixed reviews tell me the author did his job well. Outerbridge explores the meaning of life and death and what is beyond from a variety of viewpoints. Like the culture around her, Sheila is a practical atheist. Life is all about grabbing all you can and figuring out a way to cheat death as long as possible. Others are so immersed in technology their connection to the real world is all but erased. And there are fanatical Muslims and Christians alike intent on imposing their will on others rather than trust in the one in whom they say they believe.

And then there’s Rick Macy. By reading these two novels together you find him to be a complicated man. On the one hand he is a technological marvel of a killing machine but on the other a man of faith. But even Rick’s faith is complicated. Sometimes he is certain of what he believes while at other times he seems to be a man who has lost his way.

What makes this action packed story refreshing is that it is populated with people who act like, well, people. You know – real people who struggle with real issues and sometimes even make sinful decisions. Kudos to Kirk Outerbridge  for creating a character who transparently deals with a double life time of  joys, sorrows, victories, and defeats.

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After college Kirk Outerbridge returned to his homeland of Bermuda where he reunited with his childhood friend and future wife, Ria. But before marrying his lovely wife, Kirk entered an even greater marriage and devoted his life to Christ in 2002. After much prayer and contemplation, Kirk purposed his writing for God’s Will, seeking to draw to Christ those who shared his passions for all things futuristic and Sci-fi. Kirk currently lives with his wife Ria and 18 month old son Miles in beautiful Bermuda.

Love is no Illusion for Frank Peretti

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image thumb1 Love is no Illusion for Frank Peretti

Mandy was gone … It happened more quickly than anyone expected … The fact came alive as he lingered on it and  salved the horrors from his mind, at least for now. With no effort at all the unfaded image of Mandy first setting foot in his life played before his eyes, the dove girl sitting in the front row who caught and held his eye.

After nine years absence from the world of fiction, author Frank Peretti returns in high fashion as he invites us with these words into Dane and Mandy Collins’ Illusion. We are introduced to the husband and wife magic act of forty years with them torn from each other by a sudden and tragic car accident. Dane is left to mourn the loss of the only woman he ever truly loved and Mandy to something else even further beyond imagination.

Dane has nothing left but to return to their dream retirement home minus his lifetime friend and in many ways his reason for living. While he feels as though he has lost everything, Mandy may have lost even more. She now faces the loss of 40 years of her life and any knowledge of what transpired during that time. Both were born in the same year but now he is sixty and she is inexplicably nineteen. He suffers alone with his memories; she wanders the streets of the same little Idaho town alone with shadowy memories of another life and another time.

To go any further in trying to explain the plot is pointless and would do disservice to the story. If you never read speculative fiction be forewarned, this one is loaded with strange events with technical sounding explanations. Some readers will nod as though they understand time-lines and quantum physics. Others will simply scratch their heads and move on, unable to abandon this story because to do so would be to also abandon Dane and Mandy.

Illusion has plenty of action, a few nefarious types, and even a shadowy government conspiracy. But in the end, this is a love story. Note I didn’t say, Romance. If you want to know my thoughts on the difference in the two check out “I Hate Romance”.

In that article I wrote, “When you peel away the genre, the author’ s voice, the prose, and get to the core of all great stories you find the same common elements: isolation, love, failure and redemption”. Peretti reaffirms my premise because this IS a great story.

The two main characters are fleshed out in such a way I cared about both of them. Mandy’s sudden appearance, born in 1971 but walking the streets in 2010 as a nineteen year old, offers a bit of comic relief along the way. I can relate to being stuck in the 70s in my mind while bravely pretending I truly understand this new Millennium. Like Mandy, I still sometimes think “Far Out” in the italics of my mind but force myself to say “awesome” instead.

Having been married thirty-seven years myself, I could imagine being in Dane’s skin as he sits alone in that empty dream house and braves jotting down a few memories:

She was still beautiful I kid you not. Yes, she was fifty-nine. Her eyes kept the crinkle that smiling had put there; her hair was mostly blond from a bottle; the sun had deepened her freckles and coarsened her arms and back.

But there was nothing like seeing her sitting at breakfast with the morning sun at her back and her hair a corona about her head; nothing like the curve of her hips … where she draped them with a dress, framed herself in a doorway, even pushed a grocery cart. There was nothing like the pleasant roundness of her breasts under a sweater or her body against mine, that close to no other for forty years. (Chapter 12)

As far as I’m concerned Frank Peretti has scored a work of magic with Illusion. My advice is to forget trying to understand it all and just enjoy the ride.

Illusion by Frank Peretti

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image thumb4 Illusion by Frank Peretti

So let’s get this out of the way right up front. I don’t know if Frank Perritti’s, Illusion is a great novel or not; at least not yet. One can hardly make such a determination just 69 pages into an over 400 page novel. The premise is intriguing and a few chapters in, I have no doubt I will hang with this one to the end.

The author has already connected with me in a powerful way in chapter eight. Consider this passage when the main character returns home after burying his wife of 40 years.

This trip felt entirely first time. He’d bought one ticket, packed one bag, carried only one boarding pass. There was no one to wait for while going through security and no one to wait for him … He’d bought only one Starbucks coffee and a blueberry muffin for only himself … He went through the doors first with no one to open them for.

While waiting for his one bag … grief overcame him as it often did, on a schedule all its own, unpredictable, unavoidable. Maybe it was the standing here alone … Maybe there was no reason at all. Grief just came when it came, worked its way through, and receded quietly until the next time. That was the way it worked.

 

I was immediately taken back over 20 years ago. There I sat alone in a hospital room recounting for the 100th time the words of our neurosurgeon, “If you have your wife another year, count yourself lucky. There’s really not a lot of hope I can offer you.” Frank Peritti’s pounding home that word “One” painted a word picture I remember all top well. Thankfully, my wife and best friend proved them all wrong.

My point is simple. Peritti painted a scene that connected with me and I suspect will with many others.  He accomplishes that in the midst of a fantastic plot that entertains and to this point is well written. What more could I ask?

If you need more than that before making a decision to read Illusion, I doubt scanning reviews at Amazon will help much. As usual, there are those who feel cheated because the author dared to write from the view point of the world he lives and breathes in. Peritti makes no pretense about who and what he is. Even so, at least one reviewer complained, “The product description made no mention of this book belonging to the Christian Fiction genre. Had it done so, I wouldn’t have wasted my time reading the sample.”

Some in the Christian writing community have observed it is a bit of subterfuge to fail to label books as Christian. So what should Simon and Schuster have done to protect the sensitivities of the aforementioned reader? Perhaps books with warning labels are the answer: “This novel may confront you with a worldview you have previously been able insulate yourself from.”

I’m all for that as long as everyone plays by the same rules. The movie Avatar, for example, needed something more than PG-13. Perhaps, “This film is a thinly veiled attempt to equate capitalism and industry with all the problems faced by our planet.” But I digress.

In fairness, Christians are just as picky. One reader gave Illusion, 2 stars because, “As a longtime fan of Frank Peretti’s, I must say I was really disappointed with his latest,” … Gone- was the Christian symbolism, gone – was the “deep thinking” analogies and above all, gone – was the challenge to my own Christian walk with the Lord.”

So now a novel is not worthy of my time if it doesn’t challenge my Christian walk enough? In that case, a whole lot of what passes for Gospel preaching these days deserves 2 stars as well.

What these reviews and a million other words floating around the Internet about the validity of fiction with a Christian world-view  do for me is confirm how we all tend to be filled with illusions of our own self-importance. I would offer links to articles on the matter but the result is always the same – plenty of heat but little light.

So what do I mean by illusions of our own self-importance?  To listen to some, one would think we writer types are working on a cure for cancer; or even more delusional, the answer to bridging the gap between fallen man and God.

Why can’t a writer just write what he or she wants to write and hope to connect with readers looking for that kind of story? To my writer friends out there, quit lifting yourself up as the saviors of civilization by questioning what others write or read! Some of my friends have adamantly proclaimed, “I don’t read Christian fiction.” That’s their choice. Thankfully I choose to read what speaks to me regardless of the label.

That’s as close to a rant as I’ve allowed myself in a long time on this site. So back to Illusion. Peretti has had some major hits and a couple of disappointments in his career. My guess is this one is already making its way to the This Present Darkness category.

Covenant of War by Cliff Graham

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image thumb2 Covenant of War by Cliff Graham

Yaweh uses broken men. I don’t know why he uses David, why he uses us.”

When Cliff Graham introduced his Lion of War series with the first installment, Day of War, I knew in the first few pages that readers were in for something seldom seen in faith based fiction. Here was a brutally honest book that told the story of broken men seeking to make some sense out of a broken world; and in terms that didn’t insult our God-given manhood in the process.

In Day of War, David was yet to be king and seen mainly from the fringes through the eyes and mind of his soon-to-be body guard, Benaniah. There was no doubt to those closest to him that this man-child called David was to be something great one day. And it was those men who saw in him someone worth following into the face of death itself.

Covenant of War picks up with David, now king of the southern kingdom of Judah and at 30, a legend to some, hated by others, and feared to be growing soft by the warriors who know him best. With the Philistines looking to do away with Judah once and for all, it will be Eleazar, one of David’s heroic Three, whose journey holds the key. Someone must have the courage to remind David of what seems to be growing dim in the luxury of a palace.

Nothing of the scope and power of Day of War is lost and if anything is ratcheted up. The final third of Covenant of War is worthy of the best of epics with battle scenes that relentlessly bleed into one another like the life blood of the warriors in the story. The author’s extensive historical research and time in the Holy Land pays off with scenes that literally suck you into the battle.

But these men do not fight alone. When all hope is lost and each man determines to press on no matter what, another warrior contends alongside them. And when they have nothing left to give, he fights in their place.

It was a figure, a man-like thing, but it had a massive sword covered with fire. The warrior with the flaming sword raised his huge arms above his head, a war cry that resounded and shook the earth, as if a lion as vast as a mountain itself was on the hunt.

Though seen only in glimpses, this celestial warrior finally fits the image given such a one in Scripture. This is no Pillsbury Doughboyish cartoon figure of sweetness. This is a being of Hebrews chapter one whose sword is a flame of fire and is sent out to serve those who will inherit salvation.

While Covenant of War stands its ground alongside The 300 or Braveheart, it is another battle and victory that causes it to transcend such stories. Those who are brutally honest with themselves know the greatest battles are not fought with swords or with the hands of man. Such battles can be attended by flaming spiritual warriors but only won through a humble bended knee.

A large and powerful-looking man was standing with his arms crossed at the edge of the forest behind David. He had noble but hard features. His stare was severe, and David looked at the ground … “I am wicked. He would not be pleased with me.”

Covenant of War is a story of promises broken and remembered. It is the story of every man of every time. You may read it once but must live it forever!

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image thumb3 Covenant of War by Cliff GrahamCliff Graham was born in Dallas, TX and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota. He has been a Military Police soldier, Army officer, pastor, and author. He names Michael Shaara, Steven Pressfield, Louis L’Amour, and Bernard Cornwell as the most influential authors in his career. Cliff is an avid outdoor enthusiast, spending time in the mountains along the Utah-Idaho-Wyoming borders, where he lives  with his wife and sons. During breaks in writing, he enjoys speaking at conferences and churches about King David and his warriors.

Focus on Kerry Nietz

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A review of Freeheads and the Darktrench Saga by Kerry Nietz

image thumb Focus on Kerry Nietz


Man is man regardless of the century. Every struggle is ultimately with one’s self. Every decision a choice. An opportunity to be either zero of one. More often than not, we choose zero. But sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we win over the darkness. Exceed our specifications

He stoops. Touch the steam. Be a one.

 

Sandfly is a debugger. For all us freeheads that means he serves at the whim of my masters, the Abduls, to correct whatever goes wrong with their machines. And they have many machines, all designed to do their work for them. But is hard for us to understand that since we are freeheads, unhindered by the constraints of an implant that prevents us from disobeying our masters in any way.

Sandfly is sent by his master to a place few of his world ever go – space. There he discovers a fantastic secret tool of interstellar exploration known as Dark Trench. What happens next is left for you to find out. You, meaning all you freeheads that dare read A Star Curiously Singing. People like Sandfly have paid a terrible price for instant and direct access to all the information of the world, freedom to think for themselves. And, freedom to know the truth.

More importantly it leads the reader to consider what Sandfly discovers on Dark Trench. “A” is not God. There is another. One who is so much more. He is “A3”.. Does “A” stand for Allah in this story? We are never told. But there is no doubt who “A3”is. He is the One “who stoops” down to man and becomes one of us. He is the One who created all. The One who the stars sing about.

Continuing Sandfly’s story in The Superlative Stream, Nietz carried us on an adventure with Sandfly and his female companion, Hardcandy that is both dazzling and introspective. What they discover when they reach their destination challenges everything they have ever believed and known. With Dark Trench disabled, Sandfly and Hardcandy find themselves on a world of seeming blissful perfection. On this planet, the beings all seem to work in perfect harmony with no laws or implants to force them to do anything. But like many things in life, Sandfly comes to wonder if there might some hidden agenda in the beings’ interest in earth. What follows is beyond description.

Completing the Dark Trench Saga, we now have Freeheads. Sandly is determined to return to earth and see what has become of those he sent back with his revelation of a Star Curiously Singing. But Einstein was right about the speed of light (more or less). The 300 or so days Sandly has been on his journey equates to 40 years when he returns. Much has changed – much has not.

In spite of a brief stop on the moon and a reunion with an old friend, Sandfly can’t shake the calling he feels to take his newfound freedom to Earth. He been found by the One who Stoops – one totally opposite to “A”, the tyrannical god invoked to enslave earth’s masses. Now faithful to the true God, A Cubed, he determines to stoop as low as required to free mankind. In the words of Eric Wilson, “Burroughs and Bradbury, it’s a thrilling, deeply intelligent and deeply spiritual journey through a future that is all too real.

 

Visit my fill reviews of A Star Curiously Singing and The Superlative Stream at Unveiled. If you are interested in the historical, political, and religious foundations for the Dark Trench Saga, check out Sharia Law: Coming to a Courtroom Near You and Sharia Law in America- It’s Not Fiction.

 

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image thumb1 Focus on Kerry NietzKerry Nietz is a refugee of the software industry. He spent more than a decade of his life flipping bits, first as one of the principal developers of the database product FoxPro for the now mythical Fox Software, and then as one of Bill Gates’s minions at Microsoft. He is a husband, a father, a technophile and a movie buff. He has one non-fiction book, a memoir entitled FoxTales: Behind the Scenes at Fox Software. His first novel, A Star Curiously Singing, was published in October of 2009.

A Secondhand View of The Help

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I TOOK A BIT of a reading departure this past week and finally spent some time with Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. In brief, it is the story of African American maids in Jackson, MS during the turbulent 1960s. Kathryn Stockett’s perseverance through 60 rejections from agents to get this novel published is well recorded. Now with millions of copies sold and a successful film adaption, it seems she has been vindicated.

image thumb5 A Secondhand View of The HelpThe Help is a good read and works hard to recount Stockett’s personal memories of being raised by a black maid and the revelation she came to have as a young adult concerning discrimination minorities suffered in the Deep South. For that I applaud her. With that said, The Help has some serious flaws.

The author suffers from what we all do when it comes to recounting real events from personal experience in a fictionalized format. Our truth is not always THE truth. How we remember things is often distorted as we look backwards through the lens of time.

In an interview with an online magazine in the UK, Stockton recounts what life was like in Jackson, MS during the era in which the novel is set. There are a couple of problems with this. The Helpis set in the early 60s and the author wasn’t even born until 1969. Consider this quote:

Although Jackson’s population was half white and half black, I didn’t have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school. Even in the 1970s we were staunchly separated. Yet one of the closest people to me was Demetrie, our family’s black housekeeper.

I grew up visiting Jackson, MS from the time I was a small child to stay with my grandparents. My grandfather was a barber on Capitol St, downtown, for over half a century. Every landmark mentioned in The Help is etched in my memory. In 1972 my mother moved us to Jackson to live. That year Kathryn Stockett was three years old and I was a junior at Forest Hill High School. I tell you this because; whatever school the author of The Help attended in the mid 70s as a kindergartner it could not have been a public school.Those were all integrated by then.

This doesn’t mean she is wrong in her depiction of the racial divide in my home town during that era. I’ve written honestly about it before. But the story world she creates is foreign to my remembrances of the same place. Someone asked me if Stockton’s portrayal of black maids in the novel is correct. My honest answer was that I had no idea. The white people of Kathryn Stockett’s Jackson wouldn’t have let me into their country clubs or homes to find out.

The minority of negative reviews of the novel at Amazon.com mainly deal with historical and cultural inaccuracies. Stockton gets the story wrong about the assassination of Medgar Evers in 1963. In one chapter she has Evers being shot (correct) and two chapters later being beaten to death. Oddly enough, Stockton repeated this error in two major media interviews during her book tour.

So how can the author write such a moving story yet get many details wrong? She was a young child during the time of what she writes. One would think she might have gone back and done some research to verify old memories. But the story in our mind is often more interesting than the one of reality.

There were many problems in the Jackson, MS of the late 60s and early 80s. There still are. But if you will excuse the horrible pun, things weren’t nearly as black and white as presented in The Help. Yes churches were segregated. Yes there was still a stark divide. But when Kathryn Stockett was entering first grade my high school graduating class was honoring African American students.

We had a long way to go but most of us would have found black maids in white uniforms acting as surrogate mothers something foreign. On the south side of Jackson, white and black mothers worked side by side in blue collar jobs; one of my best friends at my summer job was African American, and separate public restrooms and doctor’s offices were a thing of the past.

None of this makes The Help a bad story. But it does illustrate how subjective truth can be.

On Book Reviewers and Camels

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image thumb4 On Book Reviewers and CamelsHERE RECENTLY there has been some discussion about whether professional writers make good reviewers. My friends Mike Duran and Nicole Petrino-Salter, both accomplished novelists, squared off on opposite sides of the issue and, as in most cyber-debates, I doubt many minds were changed.

I asked both an honest question, “How many professional novelists do you know that write reviews?” It just makes sense that if the premise is that professional writers make good reviewers we should look at real world examples. With that in mind, I spent way too much of my valuable time wading through several reviews written by published fiction authors.

Case in point is Philip Roth’s review of The Plot Against America by Paul Berman. Roth has written many award winning novels including one of those banned books every teenage boy of my generation thought he had to read, Portnoy’s Complaint. We all wanted to read it because of its subject matter without realizing until too late it didn’t include any pictures. But I digress.

Roth’s review in the New York Times of The Plot Against America is case in point of why I don’t generally care for reviews written by people who spend most of their time writing fiction rather than writing reviews. Consider it a community service that I took time to read all 16 web pages. That’s over 16,000 words to tell you what this novel is about. In brief, here is how Roth’s review beaks down:

Over 50% involves Roth’s explanation and thoughts on historical events. Not the author’s words about those events but Roth’s thoughts on those events.

At least 15% centers around the reviewer’s thoughts on how the story could have been told in a better way. That better way is based on Roth’s totally subjective opinions.

About 10% focuses on technical details such as narrative structure, grammatical issues, etc…

That leaves about 25% of those 16,000 words to tell us anything about the story itself.

 

Anyone who specializes in a field of study faces the same danger Philip Roth apparently relishes. When we speak to non-specialists we need to check our credentials at the door! The best preachers don’t give us a lesson in the etymology of a Greek word. They may from time to time offer a brief explanation of a word’s meaning but the message remains central, not their specialized knowledge.

The more I study the craft of writing and the more I associate with others of the same persuasion, the more difficult I find it to just write a simple review. Of course, I should point out serious flaws if I am going to recommend a book because there are a few books with serious flaws that are still worth reading. But too often I find myself succumbing to critique group syndrome. You know, wanting to throw in my opinion about things the average reader could really care less about.

I guess we all have different goals. My goal as writer is to write the very best I can and then do better. My goal as a reviewer is to encourage people to read stories I think they will be glad they read.

Perhaps the 15 year old boy in me still thanks Peter Roth for Portnoy’s Complaint but the 55 year old writer and reviewer that I am is not impressed with his excessive display of self. I’m not saying it is impossible for specialists, which professional authors are, to write in such a way a non-specialist can benefit from those thoughts. But more often than not, that proverbial camel has a better chance of squeezing through the eye of that needle.

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