Collected Miscellany

Meissner begins this pleasant debut novel with an intriguing idea. Her lead character, Claire Holland, is remembering the first time God spoke to her audibly. That memory carries Claire through a difficult trial which would dismantle some women. After being raped, she discovers she is pregnant. She wrestles with her emotions, her family’s fears, her husband’s denial, and cutting away the past while holding onto it. In the years the follow, Claire and her small Minnesota family learn to trust God whole-heartedly because of who he is alone.

Meissner has a journalism background, and that reporting-feel delivers this quiet story. As I read, I wanted it to overcome the current obstacle in order to stumble on a new one. I don’t mind slow-moving plots, but slow-moving, straight-foward plots are dull to me. If the characters or prose was more complicated, I would have been more interested.

But I must praise the theme. Why is the sky blue? Claire’s mother explains: “I knew that sometimes God’s reasons for doing things or not doing things are as deep as His character,” she says. “Being supplied with a reason when maybe I wouldn’t have been able to understand it might have made it worse for me. . . . Sometimes asking God for a reason for something is like asking Him why the sky is blue. There is a complex scientific reason for it, Claire, but most children, including you, are content with knowing it is blue because it is.”

Meissner has two more books from Harvest House. The Remedy for Regret is due out in July. A Window to the World, her second novel, came out in January.

Meissner begins this pleasant debut novel with an intriguing idea. Her lead character, Claire Holland, is remembering the first time God spoke to her audibly. That memory carries Claire through a difficult trial which would dismantle some women. After being raped, she discovers she is pregnant. She wrestles with her emotions, her family’s fears, her husband’s denial, and cutting away the past while holding onto it. In the years the follow, Claire and her small Minnesota family learn to trust God whole-heartedly because of who he is alone.

Meissner has a journalism background, and that reporting-feel delivers this quiet story. As I read, I wanted it to overcome the current obstacle in order to stumble on a new one. I don’t mind slow-moving plots, but slow-moving, straight-foward plots are dull to me. If the characters or prose was more complicated, I would have been more interested.

But I must praise the theme. Why is the sky blue? Claire’s mother explains: “I knew that sometimes God’s reasons for doing things or not doing things are as deep as His character,” she says. “Being supplied with a reason when maybe I wouldn’t have been able to understand it might have made it worse for me. . . . Sometimes asking God for a reason for something is like asking Him why the sky is blue. There is a complex scientific reason for it, Claire, but most children, including you, are content with knowing it is blue because it is.”

Meissner has two more books from Harvest House. The Remedy for Regret is due out in July. A Window to the World, her second novel, came out in January.

For most of his illustrious career Paul Johnson has not been know for his brevity. In his defense, it was not his language skills that determined the length of his popular books but rather the broad subjects he tackled. Subjects like The History of Christianity, the modern world, American history, and the history of art. Despite their length, these works have helped Johnson develop a loyal following as a popular and wide ranging historian.

But recently there has been a move toward brief biographies of important figures and events and Johnson fans have benefited. In 2000 Johnson contributed a volume on the Renaissance in the Modern Library Chronicles series. In 2002 he authored a pointed biography of Napoleon Bonaparte for the Penguin Lives series.

His most recent work follows in this vein. George Washington: The Founding Father is part of the recently launched Eminent Lives series by HarperCollins. HarperCollins has this to say about their new series:

Whether in politics, literature, science, or the arts, the subjects of this dynamic new series of brief biographies have shaped our picture of the world. The authors’ strong sensibilities and sharp, lively points of view make us see that picture in a totally new way. The key to the Eminent Lives series is the pairing of author and subject: distinguished writers on figures central to world culture.

I for one applaud this new imprint. As regular readers of this site know, I am a big fan of concise but interesting works of popular history (see here, here, and here for previous reviews from this genre) and the Eminent Lives series certainly fits the bill.

Johnson’s take on Washington is popular history (see here for more). If one is looking for tightly argued scholarship and debates about the latest paper this is not the place. First of all, Johnson tackles the subject in less than 150 pages. But that is not really Johnson’s style regardless. The readers benefits from this, as The Founding Father is an imminently readable and fascinating portrait of this critical figure in American history.

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Publisher and author Kenneth Taylor, 88, died Wednesday. Taylor founded Tyndale House after finding no publishers for his Scripture paraphrase, Living Letters, which later expanded to The Living Bible. He also launched the Christian Booksellers Association.

His son-in-law, Tim Bayly, is posting thoughts on Taylor and his passing at his blog. I love this quotation of Robertson McQuilkin’s poem, “Let Me Get Home Before Dark.”

It’s sundown, Lord.
The shadows of my life stretch back
into the dimness of the years long spent.
I fear not death, for that grim foe betrays himself at last,
thrusting me forever into life:
Life with you, unsoiled and free.
But I do fear.

Publisher and author Kenneth Taylor, 88, died Wednesday. Taylor founded Tyndale House after finding no publishers for his Scripture paraphrase, Living Letters, which later expanded to The Living Bible. He also launched the Christian Booksellers Association.

His son-in-law, Tim Bayly, is posting thoughts on Taylor and his passing at his blog. I love this quotation of Robertson McQuilkin’s poem, “Let Me Get Home Before Dark.”

It’s sundown, Lord.
The shadows of my life stretch back
into the dimness of the years long spent.
I fear not death, for that grim foe betrays himself at last,
thrusting me forever into life:
Life with you, unsoiled and free.
But I do fear.

On Wednesday I posted part one of my conversation with Michelle Herman. What follows is the conclusion of that conversation. Below we discuss the line between literary and genre fiction (if there is one); how she approaches different forms (short story, novella, novel); what her writing focuses on; the value of an MFA; blogs; and more.

KH: Your writing doesn’t include much in the way of plot and seems to focus on the prose and inner though process of your characters. Do you see a bright line between “literary fiction” and “genre fiction?” Where do you see yourself?

I hate the terms, but I use them too because you kind of have to . . . I hate the term “popular fiction” because everybody wants to be a popular writer. I mean, what would make me happier than look around and see everyone reading Dog right now? I do think that – and I kind of hated it when Jonathan Frazen said no to Oprah and said “I see myself entirely in the high art tradition” – I think there is a difference between artful writing and in-artful writing. Words that are careful chosen and shaped – it is art in the same way that any other art is artful, crafted and thought about and meditated on, really made as opposed to just getting stuff down on a page at its lowest level. You can go back to Aristotle who said that reading at the lowest common denominator was to find out what happens next – he was talking about epic poetry – but still you read to find out what happens next. And as you can tell, I have stripped that almost completely from my work. What happens is really pretty much beside the point. It is just a hanger; it is just a frame for me to hang my characters on . . . So in that way I think there is a difference.

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