Christine Pountney

This author is truly an artist. The novel was engaging, well-written, and full of interesting characters. She seemed to know quite a bit about her subjects, especially large scale evangelistic Christianity and the paradoxes evident in selling Christian experiences to the faithful. Her characters were likable and flawed, and while the book spent equal time on all three siblings, I want to say that she had a favorite. All in all, time well spent.

* I received this book for free from Goodreads First Reads.… (meer)

Sweet Jesus by Christine Pountney is a book about three siblings, who in their distinct personalities come together in a road trip towards a mega-church in Wichita, Kansas, where their mother once had a powerful faith experience, and where they, too, must come to terms with their own form of spirituality, for or against what is known to be the evangelical right.

There is Connie Foster, the eldest of the siblings who struggles not only with the recent news of her husband’s bankruptcy after a comfortable life of independent business and wealth, but also with her own fears of failure in motherhood and pious, spiritual authenticity.

Hannah Crowe, liberal both in thought, tradition, and sexuality, is desperate to have a child with James, the man she loves, but who is determined to resist her desire for parenthood. She must confront her feelings of insecurity with her family and her own childlessness.

And Zeus Ortega, their adoptive brother from Mexico who works as a therapeutic clown in a children’s hospital responds to the loss of his boyfriend by planning to meet his biological family for the first time since his adoption.

While the clarity of the language of the novel attributes to it being easily readable, it is also written in a way in which the characters themselves feel distant from the reader and become performers rather than characters with whom the reader can fully empathize. Aside from a few tender and authentic connections, the characters can sometimes come across as almost too self-absorbed.

And rather than take the opportunity to write with grace to show an authentic spiritual struggle like Anouk Markovtis does in her tender and more complex book, I Am Forbidden, the novel, Sweet Jesus, is quite opposite in its view of the evangelical right as would suggest by its title.

Which is unfortunate since its intended message of religious and cultural inclusivity instead comes across as a blatant attack on conservatism, Christianity, and the evangelical movement, thought process, and way of worship as depicted in the described “circus” of the Global Kingdom of Salvation Center in Wichita, Kansas.

The book in its narrative, superficially observes and sheds in a poor light, the evangelical movement, its thought process, and style of worship as an extreme example found in a “weekend service” without the thoughtful consideration and explanation of its theology, significance and translation of its unique worship style, and potential faith experience.

To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog, The Bibliotaphe's Closet:

http://zaraalexis.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/sweet-jesus-another-attack-on-the-chr...… (meer)

This is a story about three siblings who, individually, come to crisis points in their lives. Connie finds out that her husband has lost his business, their home and most of their possessions. Hannah finds that the man she is passionately in love with, who is crazy about her, doesn't want children. The much beloved partner of Zeus, their adopted brother, has died. Their mother suggests that they visit a fundamentalist church in Wichita where she once had a life-changing experience. Connie goes because she has faith; Hannah wants to support Connie; Zeus is on his way to New Mexico to find his birth parents.

The book is well written, and the characters are real people. I enjoyed following their inner journeys and watching their interactions. I'm still contemplating the ending...it's ambiguous at best...but it works.… (meer)