Good friends lent me the book last year but I've had a wee bit of trouble getting into it. As a general principle, fiction and I don't get along. I know this is a masterpiece,but a front row seat to ground zero in Boston for twenty years has made me more prone to finding refuge in reading.
I absolutely loved Fr. Schall's review posted earlier this week ar Crisis.. In fact, the last few lines made me cry.
I'm going to pick up the book again this weekend.
6 comments:
It's a great book. I highly recommend it if you have steady nerves. I've read it twice and might again before the summer ends. It gets scarier every time I read it.
And, if you like that, try "Windswept House" by Malachi Martin, "Father Elijah" and then the prequel, "Sophia House" by Michael O'Brien.
Novels are wonderfully instructive. Novels are the only genre in which an author can and will tell you the truth.
Louise, thanks for the encouragement and recommendations.
I had to laugh at your recommendation for windswept house. I got about 1/2 way through that and quit it for the same reason...it felt like I was swimming in a cesspool I was all to familiar with! Couldn't bring myself to even start Phil Lawler's book. Phil and I don't see eye-to-eye on what went down exactly, but there's enough substance on the ground game for me to procrastinate unto this day.
I know the feeling, Carol. I was rather like reading the day's newspapers.
Try O'Brien's two books that I mentioned. He also wrote a trilogy: "Strangers and Sojourners", "Plague Journal", and "Eclipse of the Sun." All are very good. I think that, after those books, he became a little too esoteric, often putting aside his story for irrelevant poetry (IMHO). Those five are excellent.
"The Lord of the World" is pretty unnerving but certainly worth the trip if you have the courage.
I'll get them on my list and try to give it a go. I could be kidding myself but I'm not so much afraid as I know with 100% certainty it is happening. It's more like something you've been through and on the sojourn watched it consume and destroy.
Kinda like watching a fire that you know is killing people inside. For years and years you yell to wake up the sleeping, contact the firemen most of whom you realize don't give a flying fig, try to find every source of water you can, try to pull people out of windows. Eventually, the death and destruction becomes all too sickening and morbid to gawk at.
Come to think of it, it probably is being a wimp!
Maybe on second thought, Carol, having lived it you probably don't need to read it.
Why don't you write it, instead?
In novel form.
I could never do it as well as the classics that are already out there.
I'll let you know how I make out with my reading list!
God Bless.
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