Year in (Book) Review: The Shack

1. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
2. The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld
3. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

(I promise I'm nearly caught up and will soon have other things to report on, discuss, and generally whine about than books I'm reading this year.) (Okay, I don't promise that, but I promise to try.)

I'm not particularly sure what it says about my current mental state or general ability to choose an upbeat topic to immerse myself in, but, to follow up with my previous reading of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, I chose The Shack. Yep, a second story that aims to tell about a father tormented by the untimely and brutal death of his young daughter.

That's about where the similarities end, however. Author William P. Young's book is unabashedly "Christian" in its approach. I've read quite a few faith-centric books (Max Lucado is a big favorite of mine; I readily admit to taking in more than my fair share of Chicken Soup) and Mr. Young's book ranks up there with those -- both in earnestness and cheesiness. The description on the back cover of the novel describes the author as "raised among a stone-age tribe by his missionary parents... He suffered a great loss as a child and young adult, and now enjoys wastefulness of grace' with his family..." Well. There you go. I'm actually happy I didn't catch any of that until after I'd read the book, or I'm afraid my eyes might have rolled back in my head so far that I wouldn't have been able to read at all. Sorry about that if you've not read it. I volunteer to smack the backs of anyone whose rolling eyes have stuck.

I poke fun at an entire genre (hey, it's my blog...) but I really don't mean to belittle. As I said, I have oftentimes sought out Christian books when I feel like I'm far away from my faith, when I need a little pick-me-up, or when, as is pretty regularly the case, I'm just feeling a little lost. This one, sitting on the best sellers' shelf in my beloved Hoboken Barnes & Noble, grabbed my attention for all those reasons. All teasing aside, it didn't disappoint.

Several years after unspeakable tragedy strikes his family, our narrator finds a note in his mailbox, presumably and inexplicably from God, inviting him to return to the very shack where his young daughter was snatched and presumed murdered by a serial child killer. The following 90% of the book takes place over the course of that weekend, and it's an interesting, if predictable, progression of tale. But after all, don't we choose these books because of that very predictability? You can't get annoyed when follows the exact course it never claims to wander from. That's like going to see Legally Blond and getting annoyed that you didn't come away with a Harvard education.

The Shack, therefore, follows in a long line of religion-based books, and feels much like a prolonged fable for adults. It's chock full of messages, lessons, and morals. What drew me in, however, was Young's ability to tell such a familiar, predictable story in a rather refreshing way. He manages to keep from leaning too far into the preachy, evangelical world of so many like him; he avoids the pitfalls and cliches that so many of his fellow Christian writers haven fallen prey to, thereby alienating any reader who actually cares about the quality of the text.

I was a little confused by the forward, which explains to readers that the actual narrator is a friend of the protagonist father at the center of the story. He gives a detailed explanation of the narrator's point of view, and then never seems to become a pertinent piece of information again. I don't really get what it lent to the story and I certainly could have done without it -- I kept waiting for it to matter and it never did.

But after this rocky start Mr. Young falls readily and easily into his story, and it's enjoyable to follow along. Again, it's a bit jarring to use the word "enjoy" when reading such a truly traumatic account, but much like with Ms. Sebold's version, he handles the delicate topic with such grace and respect that he allows his readers permission to smile.

The Shack ends happily, if predictably, and I wouldn't have been satisfied with any other kind of ending.