I recently wrote a review for the book: Best Forgotten by Paula Vince.

Ok, to get started, this book was excellent. I tend to write negative reviews focusing (as you will see below) on what I don't like, so I want to get started by saying that this book was excellent, and I was pleased to review it.

Now that that's out of the way, moving on to the fun part :)

First of all, Australia and Britain have got to get their quotation marks switched over to the international (read 'American') standard. It is very annoying to have real quotes set off with glorified apostrophes ;)

Secondly, more seriously, while I was kept going (and kept up late) reading this book, I was very disappointed in the climax of this book for several reasons:

***Warning, Spoiler alert***

First of all, it wasn't climactic. Several huge tensions were raised in the book, and basically ignored or glossed over in the climax. For example, everyone the lead character talks to in the book insists that, once he regains his memory, he will reject everyone and anything that he has dealt with/done since losing his memory. But this turns out to be rather squishily not only not the case, but not even that much of an issue.

From a theological standpoint the climax was disappointing as well. The book brought forward, perhaps not that clearly but they were present, sins by all of the major characters. (Indeed, one thing that seemed missing from the book was any sort of 'normal' character.) Biblically speaking the proper reaction to sin, revealed, is repentance: Acknowledgement and turning from the sin and recognition that Christ, and Christ alone, can cause and mediate that repentance.

But Christ and repentance both seemed, here, to be painted in pastel undertones. The horror of the various sins tended to be treated as a product of a difficult past (in the case of the main characters rebellion and hatred) or excused as the fault of other peoples (in the case of the secondary characters sin of divorce and remarriage).

Christ promises us a new birth, and a new creation, not a vague and gradual change to becoming a nicer and freindlier person. He calls us to repent and turn from our present sins, not to paper over them with excuses.

I recently read a book (Man and Wife by Willkie Collins) which also captivated me, and kept me up late reading. Not claiming to be a Christian book it nevertheless dealt with some Christian themes. Perhaps even inadvertently the author forced his characters into dramatic confrontations with good and evil. Some succeeded, some failed, but all were, at least, confronted and challenged; forced to act, to decide, and to face the consequences of their decisions.

I received this book through the Book Crash program, my first. I will be passing this book on to others, and I do recommend it. I would have loved to have been able to review it before publication :)