A good discussion here. I’ll throw in my two-pence worth.
I read The Shack a couple of times last year. I read it twice because I found its themes and its theological stance compelling and uplifting. I thought the depiction of the Trinity was refreshing and clever, and Paul Young is clearly a jolly nice chap in whom the Spirit dwells far more than in a miserable old git like me.
Because I’m afraid I found it all too amateurish as a piece of fiction. The actual writing was limp and cliched, and the characterisation, such as I recall it, shallow. For me, *The Shack *suffers from the same faults that handicap a lot of (most?) overtly *Christian *fiction, and indeed overtly *Christian *rock music - blandness, twee saccharinity, and a failure to engage with the reality of human life in all its grimy, painful glory.
Paul Young is very brave to take on the sensitive subject of child murder. But unfortunately he fails to pull it off because he is unwilling or unable to penetrate the true darkness at the heart of his subject. He’s also just not a particularly good writer.
I hope I don’t come across as uncharitable in what I’m saying. I know *The Shack *has sold gazillions of copies. And God knows the writing isn’t much worse than, say, Dan Brown’s egregious Da Vinci Code, or indeed any of the *Harry Potter *novels. But like I say, if you want to take on a subject like the killing of a child in fiction, you need to be brave enough to go the whole hog, to plunge headlong into that darkness.
And that is something only the great Christian novelists have done successfully - Graham Greene, William Golding or Dostoyevsky for example – that great Russian author’s Notes from Underground being a particularly fine example.
Even CS Lewis, who I admire hugely, struggles to ‘do evil’ convincingly in his adult novels. (Although I seem to recall him admitting as much.)
For me, the best ‘Christian’ fiction, like the best ‘Christian’ music, is that in which any religious themes are latent rather than overt. Too much ‘Christian’ fiction I’ve read – which isn’t much, admittedly – reads like an extended homily, with the story merely a framework on which the author hangs his own theological beliefs.
An absolutely textbook example of this sort of guff is a recent novel called The Influence by Matt Slick. Some of you may have heard of Mr Slick, as he runs a pompous vanity website called CARM – Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. The site has a prima facie veneer of authority, which is very sad as its content is toxic rubbish, the absolute epitome of intolerant, ultra conservative Calvinist fundamentalism.
Anyway, Matt Slick has churned out a Christian ‘thriller’ in the vein of Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness. Now any of you who have read Peretti will know that he won’t be troubling the Nobel prize committee any time soon. But compared to Matt Slick he is a literary giant. Slick makes old Frank look like Herman Melville!
I downloaded a free sample of The Influence onto my Kindle (almost causing it to malfunction permanently in protest). If you’re brave enough, here’s the opening sentence:
Near the ceiling of an immense, dark cavern, a tear in the fabric of space wrenched open and was followed by a twisting metal sound that echoed among the craggy walls.
There’s only one word for this: yeeuurrcchhhh.
It’s quite amusing, actually, as Mr Slick tries to depict a demon-infested hell in The Influence. Well I certainly felt like I was in hell during the few long minutes I spent reading the opening chapters.
Luckily for my sanity the free sample didn’t take me too far into Slick’s poisonous theological browbeating. Sadly some gullible Christians already seem to have shelled out for this garbage. Some of them, judging by the reviews on Amazon, actually seem to have enjoyed it – those who aren’t Slick’s minions, that is.
The Shack, with all its faults, is as far above The Influence as The New York Times is above The National Enquirer.
So, to return to the OP’s question, are there any books I’d recommend? Well, bearing in mind my literary taste – which hopefully I’ve made clear
– I would recommend CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce. It’s a quick and easy read, compelling, clever, theologically challenging, and you get to meet George MacDonald in it!
I’d also recommend Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by the aforementioned Dostoyevsky. Be warned, though, these are definitely not quick or easy reads
. Plus pretty much anything by Greene or Golding, although Lord of the Flies is always a good one to start with.
Actually, Brad, on reflection maybe you might want to skip Greene for a while if your faith is feeling a bit downtrodded. He was a tortured Catholic who suffered from severe depression, and most of his novels demonstrate that. Golding called him, “the ultimate chronicler of twentieth century man’s consciousness and anxiety”. Gives you an idea of where he’s coming from!
I don’t know, Brad. I guess fundamentally I believe that life is – for the most part – a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and my taste in novels reflects that sensibility. But by the Grace of God I do occasionally manage to raise my head up above the cesspit of my angst, snatch a few quick breaths of God’s clean air, catch tantalising glimpses of something bigger and brighter. And in that I put my faith.
All the best to you
Johnny