THE CASUAL VACANCY by J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults was released a week ago, and a lot of reviewers have weighed in since then (Google them, if you care: some of the best are from U.K. newspapers). The professional reviews mostly range from "OK" to "Oh dear," and Amazon customer reviews stand (right now) at 2.7/5.0 in the U.S., 2.9/5.0 in the U.K. Maybe the higher U.K. score is because more U.K. readers know what Ms. Rowling means when she says things like "the rubber soared right across the room."

In my review for Books and Culture (online edition) I look at an aspect of The Casual Vacancy that other reviewers didn't mention, to my knowledge--its fairly obvious theological underpinnings. (Quite a few other underpinnings are fairly obvious in the book as well, but I decided not to mention them in the review.) It would make me and B&C editor John Wilson very happy if you'd click the link and read my review on the B&C website.

In the review, I argue that Rowling's village of Pagford is post-Christian. Indeed, it is post-moral: love of neighbor is sorely lacking. Instead, we see status seeking. Middle-class chauvinism. Decreasing funds for social services. Increasing poverty. Love of money. Selfishness. Bullying. Disdain for outsiders (gays, people of color, people on welfare, mentally ill people, ugly people). Abuse. Fractured relationships. Polarization. And on, and on. If you've been paying attention to U.S. or U.K. politics recently, the picture will look depressingly familiar.

In Pagford there's a shabby little street called Hope. Three of the book's characters have lived there. One moved out long ago and became one of the town's biggest (literally) hypocrites. One died. And by book's end, one is getting ready to leave. There are still plenty of people in Church Row, though. You just might not want to spend time with them.

A lot of readers have found A Casual Vacancy dull. I understand: it didn't grab me until I was past page 200 (I stuck with it because I had a review to write). Then I read it a second time, and found it interesting right from the beginning. I think that's because by then I knew all the characters and could just read the story without trying to sort out Colin and Gavin and Simon (why do Brits have so many five-letter names that end in "n"?). To make your reading more enjoyable right from the start, here's a list of the book's major characters. Print it out and use it as a bookmark:

• Barry and Mary Fairbrother and four children including the twins, Niamh and Siobhan. Barry, who was born in the Fields but became a banker, dies. The family lives in Church Row.
• Miles and Samantha Mollison and two daughters, Lexie and Libby. Miles practices law and Samantha owns a bra shop. They also live in Church Row.
• Howard and Shirley Mollison, parents of Miles and Patricia (who now lives in London). Howard owns the village deli and is president of the Parish Council (sort of like being mayor); Shirley is a hospital volunteer. They live around the corner from Church Row in Evertree Crescent.
• Colin and Tessa Wall and their son, Stuart ("Fats"). Colin is deputy headmaster at the comprehensive school (=high school vice principal); Tessa is a guidance counselor. Fats is in high school. They live in Church Row.
• Simon and Ruth Price and two sons, Andrew ("Arf") and Paul. Simon works at the printworks; Ruth is a nurse. Arf is in high school.
• Vikram and Parminder Jawanda and three children including Sukhvinder, the youngest, a high school student. Both parents are doctors. They live in the Old Vicarage.
• Gavin Hughes, divorced, a junior partner in the law firm where Miles Mollison is senior partner. He lives outside town at the Smithy.
• Kay Bawden and her daughter, Gaia. Kay is a social worker; Gaia is in high school. They  live in Hope Street. Kay and Gavin have a rocky relationship.
• Terri Weedon and her children Krystal and Robbie. Terrie is a junkie and a prostitute who lives in the Fields (a subsidized housing project). Krystal is a classmate of Fats, Arf, Sukhvinder, and Gaia. Robbie is three years old.
• Nana Cath, Terri's grandmother. At various times she has taken care of Terri and Krystal. She lives in Hope Street.

OK, now you're ready to read. Or to resume reading, if you gave up early. The Casual Vacancy, as everyone points out, is not Harry Potter. All the same, it's worth getting into if you want to think about what the Muggle world might look like without Hogwarts, without Dumbledore, and without Harry.

GOD IS NOT ONE by Stephen Prothero and MAN SEEKS GOD by Eric Weiner

Last year when Matt, the adult religious ed director at St. Mike's Catholic Church, asked the Wednesday morning class what they'd like to study next, the response was nearly unanimous - other religions.

St. Mike's is in Wheaton, Illinois, and Wheaton used to be called the evangelical Vatican (it now vies with Colorado Springs for that title). Wheaton is in DuPage County, which is roughly two-thirds Catholic. But the heavily Christian western suburbs of Chicago are changing. Today DuPage County, though still the home of hundreds of Christian churches, also has four Muslim mosques, six Hindu temples, an Arya Samaj center, a Buddhist temple, a Buddhist meditation center, two synagogues, and the headquarters of the Theosophical Society. These people are our neighbors, our coworkers, our children's classmates. No wonder we want to learn more about them.

Thanks to the class, I've gotten acquainted with Stephen Prothero's outstanding survey, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (2010). Prothero's thesis runs counter to the prevailing wisdom, at least in the West. No, he argues, the world's major religions are not all essentially the same. They do not all lead to the same place. They do not "make up one big, happy family." "This is a lovely sentiment," Prothero writes, "but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue." Intended to increase tolerance, such wishful thinking about other religions can actually lead to more terrorism, more war.

Prothero, who describes himself as "religiously confused," does not argue for the superiority of one religion over another. His aim is not to proselytize but to increase clarity and understanding. He does this by looking at how each religion answers the big questions: "Here we are in these human bodies. What now? What next? What are we to become?" "Each religion," he writes, articulates

a problem;

a solution to this problem, which also serves as the religious goal;

a technique (or techniques) for moving from this problem to this solution; and

an exemplar (or exemplars) who chart this path from problem to solution.

Choosing eight religions based on their numeric and historical importance, he then devotes separate chapters to each: Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba religion, Judaism, and Daoism, with "a brief coda" on atheism. The chapters can be read in any order. Last night I delved into Confucianism, about which I know almost nothing. Oops--Prothero says it's been more influential than any other religion except Islam and Christianity. In 30 pages, he summarizes its history, its teachings, and its influence (especially in the West). He also made me laugh out loud more than once. Here is a teacher who can impart an amazing amount of information while holding my attention, not an easy task.

God Is Not One is a great introduction for people interested in other religions' history, teachings, and practices. If that's more than you want to know but you'd still like to find out how various religions might feel to a Western observer, try Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine (2011). It offers significantly less information, being almost entirely experience oriented; but it's fascinating and funny and might even inspire you to go on and read Prothero's book.

Eric Weiner (channeling Prothero?) describes himself as a "Confusionist" and does not accept "the politically correct belief that all religions are equally valid":

I find this extraordinary. Would we say that about anything else? Would we say that all forms of government, be it totalitarian or democracy, were equally true and good? Would we say that all corporations are equally true and good? Would we say that all toaster ovens are equally true and good? Yet when it comes to religion we jettison our powers of discernment. Saying all religions are equally true and good is like saying none are.

He does not argue in favor of the truer and better, however, because--as a health crisis dramatically showed him--he doesn't know who his God is. So he grabs a notebook and his passport and sets off to find God.

Interested mostly in religious experience, he spends time with touchy-feely subgroups of some of the world's major religions (and a few minor ones): Islam (Sufism) in Mendocino, CA, and Istanbul, Turkey; Buddhism in Kathmandu; Christianity (Franciscans) in the Bronx, NY; Raëlism (this would be the world's largest UFO-based religion) in Las Vegas, NV; Taoism in Wuhan, China; Wicca in Seattle, WA; Shamanism in Beltsville, MD; and--I'm guessing this is his personal favorite--Judaism (Kabbalah) in Tzfat, Israel.

The result is a crazy melange of personal memoir, travel writing, religion, and journalism--and it works. Weiner's previous book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World (2008), made the New York Times bestseller list and collected a heap of awards. I wouldn't be surprised if Man Seeks God does the same.

FLUNKING SAINTHOOD by Jana Riess

Flunking Sainthood has to be the most entertaining introduction to spiritual disciplines ever written. For that matter, it may be the only entertaining book ever written in that genre. Never mind—it would take first place even if the field were crowded.

It's been out since November 1st, so I'm coming late to the party. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and then named it one of the ten best religion books of 2011. Emergent pastor and radio host Doug Pagitt interviewed Riess three times. On the Patheos website, Holly Welker wrote that "it's hard to imagine a religious memoir with wider appeal." Welker's review is excellent, if you want to know more about the book. Or hey, just Google "review Flunking Sainthood." Everybody's talking about it.

When her publisher asked her to spend a year reading and writing about spiritual classics, Riess upped the ante: she decided to supplement her reading with practice. She would choose a different spiritual discipline for each month of the year, and she would chronicle the results. Wonder what happened? Note the title.

Instead of commenting on what Riess wrote (click on some links in paragraph 2 above if that's what you want to know), I'd like to suggest different ways this book might be used.

First, of course, you could just sit down and read it. That won't take long unless, like me, you keep it in the bathroom and read it in multiple sittings. And maybe it's good to take it slowly—after all, it's about a whole year of Riess's life. It's so engrossing, though, that if you settle down in a comfortable chair and start reading, you might forget to eat, drink, or pay the bills until you've finished.

Then you might want to do your own experiment. You could pick out a dozen disciplines and investigate them through reading and practice, as Riess did. Or you could choose one or two of the practices that appeal to you and devote six months or a year to making them part of your life.

But the further I got into this book, the more I thought that it really needs to be read with friends. Do you already belong to a book group, a prayer group, a support group, a study group? Your group could read and discuss Flunking Sainthood all at once or—much better—read a chapter each month, try out the spiritual practice described, and meet to share your experiences (this will work especially well if you enjoy laughing). As Riess says in her powerfully personal Epilogue,

One of the main lessons I learned this year ... was that I was ... an idiot for trying so much of this by myself rather than in community. Spiritual practices help the individual, sure, but it takes a shtetl to raise a mensch. There's a particular kind of hubris in the DIY approach I took to all of these spiritual practices, most of which weren't intended to be tried alone.

In fact, Riess makes it easy for you. You don't have to jump in with both feet: January is about choosing practices. February, when the liturgically inclined are probably feeling guilty anyway for not doing more about Lent, Riess looks at fasting. December is about generosity.

But she doesn't make it mindlessly easy. There are no thought questions, prayer starters, or similar irritants.  Flunking Sainthood is a memoir, not a tool. Riess comes across as a friend, not an instructor. And even though she says she flunked every practice she tried, she also learned a lot along the way—though not what she expected to learn—and her readers will learn a lot too.

If your taste in spiritual discipline runs to hair shirts and beds of nails, you probably won't care for this book. As an honest, funny, irreverent introduction to time-honored Christian practices, however, it can't be beat.
____________________________

Full disclosure: Jana Riess is a friend and colleague. I used to be on the editorial board of her publisher, Paraclete Press, and Paraclete sent me a review copy of Flunking Sainthood. Actually, Paraclete sends me review copies of just about everything they publish, and I rarely review any of them (recent exception: Sarah Jobe's delightful Creating with God, which I reviewed last month). Publishers and authors never pay me for writing reviews. I'm poor, but honest.

WHY STAY CATHOLIC? by Michael Leach

"Why in the hell would an intelligent Episcopalian woman choose to become a Catholic?" I had been a Catholic for less than six months when a cradle Catholic of Irish descent - a classmate of mine at a Catholic university - asked me that question. I don't remember how I answered. I'm sure I wasn't very articulate.

Today I still am not sure how to answer her question, or the more compelling question now that I've been a Catholic (more or less) for nearly two decades: Why Stay Catholic? The hierarchy's attitude toward women and children has not improved. Now more than ever, church leadership seems to run the gamut from insensitive to corrupt. So when I saw the title of Mike Leach's new book, which I first read about in an interview by Heidi Schlumpf in Publishers Weekly, I emailed an editor friend at Loyola Press and brazenly asked for a copy.

Disclaimer: I've been involved in in religion publishing for over 30 years. I know and admire Mike, who has worked in religion publishing longer than I have, and in much more exalted positions. I used to work at Loyola Press, and my editor friend there did not charge me for this book. So you are free to discount everything I'm about to say, though I'll also point out that nobody urged me to read the book or even told me it existed, and nobody asked me to write this review (if they had, I would have refused - I'm a contrarian), and - believe me - nobody is paying me for writing it.

So maybe you can trust me when I tell you that this is a good book for lapsed and semi-lapsed Catholics as well as for regular mass-attenders who nevertheless are troubled by aspects of their church ("weary Catholics," Mike calls them). I'd also recommend the book to people who are considering converting to Catholicism. And Protestants could benefit from reading it too: a lot of what Mike says in the first half of the book is true for all Christians.

Mike writes for laypersons, not clergy or academics. His style is light and breezy, but his ideas run deep. He does not have an agenda. He's not trying to defend irrelevant teachings or counterproductive practices. He's not trying to get you to go to mass every week (he admits he doesn't always go himself). He's clearly not trying to put a good spin on the church's serious faults.

But neither does he spend much time complaining. Mike is in love with the church. It's his family. It's where he meets God. It's where he rubs shoulders with people of faith who have changed the world for the better. It's where he sees the realities - the Reality - that lies beneath the surface, what Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called "the dearest freshness deep down things." What Mike wants to do, I think, is to talk about God's presence everywhere in the world, God's unimaginable love and grace for everyone, and some of the people who make that love and grace visible.

In Part 1, "Ideas," Mike leads with what Andrew Greeley has dubbed the "sacramental imagination." In the next 24 short chapters, he looks at a wide range of great Catholic ideas:  God's all-embracing arms, the seamless garment of life, everyday faithfulness, social justice, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and even the Catholic penchant for parties ("Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, / There's always laughter and good red wine./ At least I've always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!" - Hilaire Belloc). Each chapter in this section ends with an "I stay Catholic" sentence or two. For example, a chapter on inclusiveness ends, "I am still Catholic because the story of Bethlehem teaches me we are all welcome. I stay in the church because I know this is true no matter what anybody says."

Underlying just about every chapter is what must be Mike's favorite scriptural passage (and is certainly mine): "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruler, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!" - Romans 8:38-39, NRSV. Mike puts hands and feet on this love in Part 2, "People," and Part 3, "Places," where he offers vignettes of 15 contemporary Catholic Christians and 10 admirable Catholic institutions. In these days when so much of the news about the Catholic church is truly dreadful, it's great to be reminded of so many good Christians, mostly working under the radar. And for readers who want to know more, he ends each chapter in these two sections with one or more URLs.

A two page article that begins "If I were Pope" is worth the price of the book, as is the concluding chapter on how a third Vatican council could unleash a tidal wave of forgiveness. The most moving chapter, however, is the one about Vickie, the love of Mike's life. Over 40 years ago he left the priesthood to marry her. Seven or eight years ago she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In sickness and in health, their love affair continues. Mike loves her, and he is faithful.

That's probably also how Mike relates to his church, and why he is still a Catholic.

LIT by Mary Karr

If you like Anne Lamott's nonfiction, you'll love Lit. If you find Lamott's essays just a teensy bit irritating, try Lit anyway - you may like Mary Karr's approach better. If you've never heard of Lamott, this genre - kickass spiritual memoir - may not be high on your wish list. But there are other reasons to read Lit ...

Lit - what does it mean?

When I first saw the title of the best-selling 2009 memoir, I figured it had something to do with literature, as in Mary Karr is an important poet in contemporary American lit.

I quickly realized that it also had a lot to do with alcohol, as in Karr couldn't function unless she was lit.

Toward the end of the book, I saw that it could also refer to light, as in Once Karr accepts the universe, and God, and love, she sometimes feels lit from within.

Two chapters into Lit, I already knew why it was named a best book of 2009 by the New York Times, "the New Yorker (Reviewer Favorite), Entertainment Weekly (Top 10), Time (Top 10), the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, Slate, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Seattle Times." Another chapter or two, and I couldn't put the book down.

Admittedly, as memoir, Lit has two strikes against it. Only a tiny percentage of memoirs submitted to publishers ever become books (an editor once told me that when she sensed a memoir coming over the transom, she hid under her desk), and most published memoirs go out of print quickly. Memoir is an extremely difficult genre to get right. Our own stories, endlessly fascinating to us, rarely appeal to a broader audience. But Mary Karr's memoirs - this is her third - are lit.

Take, for example, her description of inner light, which I summarized so prosaically above. "Every now and then," Karr writes,

we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we're formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential. Usually, the closest we get is when we love, or when some beloved beams back.

Such lovely writing would have made this book a succès d'estime even if almost nobody ever bought it. But Karr is not just a poet, she's also a story teller and the creator of unforgettable characters. Her mother, for example:

Maybe any seventeen-year-old girl recoils a little at the sight of her mother, but mine held captive in her body so many ghost mothers to be blotted out. If my eyelids closed, I could see the drunk platinum-blond Mother in a mohair sweater who'd divorced Daddy for a few months and fled with us to Colorado to buy a bar. Or the more ancient Mother in pedal pushers might rise up to shake the last drops from the gasoline can over a pile of our toys before a thrown match made flames go whump, and as the dolls' faces imploded so the wires showed through, the very air molecules would shift with the smoke-blackened sky, so the world I occupied would never again be fully safe.

I could go on and on, pointing out Karr's Texas diction, wacky humor, eye for detail, and flashes of insight. You already know her story is about bad parenting, substance abuse, recovery, and conversion; I could add that it's also about depression and divorce and kind mentors and writing. But why describe dinner when food is already on the table? Put down the menu, pick up the fork, and dig in.

Though if you still need convincing, here are three fine reviews:

• Susan Cheever, "The Morning After," New York Times
• Valerie Sayers, "Was Blind Drunk But Now She Sees," Washington Post
• Francine Prose, "A Knife at the Door," New York Review of Books

NO LONGER AT EASE by Chinua Achebe

Just about every list of great African novels includes Chinua Achebe’s 1958 classic, Things Fall Apart (see my review here). Achebe, a Nigerian by birth who now teaches at Brown University, wrote the novel when he was in his 20s. Two years later he published a follow-up novel, No Longer at Ease. The two books should be read together.

Both stories are tragedies: a good man comes to a bad end. His weakness combines with exterior circumstances to bring him down.

The first novel is about Okonkwo, an Ibo village leader around the turn of the 20th century when Britain was turning Nigeria into a colony. No Longer at Ease picks up the story two generations later in the mid 1950s, as Nigeria moves toward independence. Its protagonist is Okonkwo's grandson Obi.

Obi is the son of Isaac Okonkwo, who (in the first book) repudiated his father's ancestral traditions and converted to the colonists’ religion. A recent graduate of a British university, Obi no longer practices Christianity. His passion is for education, achievement, and moral rectitude. Obi wants to clean up Nigeria and, as he tells his friend Christopher, he knows how it should be done:

     "The civil service is corrupt because of these so-called experienced men at the top," said Obi.
     "You don't believe in experience? You think that a chap straight from university should be made a permanent secretary?"
     "I didn't say straight from the university, but even that would be better than filling our top posts with old men who have no intellectual foundations to support their experience."
     "What about the Land Officer jailed last year? He is straight from the university."
     "He is an exception," said Obi. "But take one of these old men. He probably left school thirty years ago in Standard Six. He has worked steadily to the top through bribery--an ordeal by bribery. To him the bribe is natural. He gave it and he expects it. Our people say that if you pay homage to the man on top, others will pay homage to you when it is your turn to be on top. Well, that is what the old men say."
     "What do the young men say, if I may ask?"
     "To most of them bribery is no problem. They come straight to the top without bribing anyone. It's not that they're necessarily better than others, it's simply that they can afford to be virtuous. But even that kind of virtue can become a habit."

Alas, as the reader knows from the very first chapter, Obi will run afoul of the law.

At first everything seems to be going his way. His Western education has qualified him for one of the coveted "European posts" - a senior-level government job usually reserved for white people. He lives in one of the better districts of Lagos. He has a car, a driver, a houseboy, and a woman he loves.

But Obi no longer belongs anywhere.

In many ways he is more like the colonizers than his countrymen. Having spent four years abroad, he sees his country with new eyes, and it looks shabby. He will not grease any palms. He will not allow the tribal council, his father, or ancient customs to dictate his behavior. He is independent and will make his own decisions about education, money, and whom to marry.

His Western leanings tend to isolate him from family and friends. Members of the Umuofia Progressive Union do not understand his clothing, his speaking style, his taste in food, and – especially – his intransigence when they object to his fiancée. His parents are hurt that he so readily flouts ancient traditions. Eventually Obi walks out on just about his entire support system.

And yet his British employers and associates do not see him as one of themselves (his boss has a visceral dislike for Africans). They do not help him get the practical information he needs to function in their society – information, for example, about insurance and taxes and cash advances.

In the end he is on his own, and no one - not the learned judge, not the British Council man, not even the Nigerian men of Umuofia – can understand why Obi would compromise his principles.

Achebe took the book's title from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Journey of the Magi." He quotes these lines in the epigraph:

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

For all their faults, it is easy to identify with and even love Okonkwo and Obi. And for those of us who talk glibly of "culture wars," it is eye-opening to look through their eyes at a genuine clash of cultures, one whose repercussions are still being felt sixty years later.