Acts of Faith
Registered by Sedeara of Sioux Falls, South Dakota USA on 12/15/2004
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
For those of you who were wondering if Erich can write anything good outside the Love Story stories--he can't.
This book was a disappointment on so many levels. Erich should really stick to shorter works, because when he tries to write something longer, it just starts to feel aimless. It was just a bunch of people bumbling around, and we had to watch them bumble through their whole lives. Well, about 500 pages of their lives, anyway. They weren't really 'real' characters--I wouldn't know them if I saw them walking down the street. They were characters that were defined solely by what they did, not who they *were*. I also hoped the charachters/readers would wrestle more with questions of God, religion, etc., since the main characters are Rabbis and Priests, but God hardly came into these characters' consciousness at all. It was like being men of the cloth was just their job, not part of who they were--which can be a statement in itself, of course, but I don't think that was the case in this book. I think in this book, it was just laziness. He also passed by the chance to introduce some fabulous plot twists that would have bumped my rating up at least one star.
It was one of those books where I felt like the author felt like he could use his characters to show how smart he was, like we were really supposed to admire his characters, and all I did was roll my eyes because other people did admire them and they were so two-dimensional to me.
The characters:
Danny: Danny is the rabbi's son, destined to become the next rabbi in their Orthodox Jewish community. For some reason, Danny's chapters are told 1st person. Actually, if you just took all Danny's first person chapters and stringed them together to make a book, it probably would have been a lot more focused than this book. So, he's lauded as the only son. Goes to college, meets an atheist professor, decides he doesn't wanna be a Rabbi anymore, breaks his father's heart, sleeps with a prostitute who gives him good stock advice, becomes a millionaire, tries to buy his father's love back, but his father dies the day that he gave him the millions--still not forgiving his son. Son gets in trouble later on for embezzling money, loses everything, and becomes a traveling Rabbi. Marries a woman 20 years younger than him who he's desperately in love with after seeing her like once. Goes back to his Orthodox community and decides to be the kind of Rabbi his daddy wanted him to be all along.
Timothy: A bastard kid who got into lots of trouble as a kid. Hung out in the Jewish community some, met Deborah (Danny's sister). Kisses her once. She gets in big trouble and gets sent to Israel where Timmy can't see her no more. Timothy pines over her for the rest of his life. Has sex with her while he's a seminarian, but becomes a priest anyway. Keeps pining, pining, pining, over this woman he never really knew at all. At the end of the book, he leaves the priesthood for her.
Deborah: The nice Jewish girl. Gets sent to Israel as punishment for a kiss. Pines over Timothy. Joins a liberal Jewish community. Has sex with Timmy while he's in the seminary. Gets pregnant. Keeps the baby a secret. Along with her liberal Jewish community, makes up a story about how baby's daddy was nice Jewish boy who got killed in war. Goes back with son and lies in tow to the U.S. Never dates anyone 'cause she's pining over Timmy. Becomes a Rabbi herself. Pines over Timmy some more. Is really happy at the end when Timmy comes back for her, even though her son is royally screwed up from having been lied to his whole life and basically hates Timmy's entrance into his mom's and his life.
The thing that bothered me most about Deborah was that the author tried so hard to set her up as a liberated, feminist-y type woman, and yet she spent the whole fucking book pining over someone that she barely knew, and uprooted her son and left her rewarding job as a Rabbi because a psychologist told her all her son's problems were due to the fact that "he didn't have a man in his life to emulate." So she goes back to the liberal commune in Israel to expose her sonny-boy to some male role-models, where Timmy finds her, end of story, period.
I guess I'm getting sort of sick of the priest-forbidden-love plot. There's only so many variations you can do on that theme.
The one thing I appreciated about this book: The author obviously put a *lot* of research into it and did show sufficient respect for both the Jewish and Catholic traditions. And he spent 4 years on the book. It felt like it took that long for me to read it.
** (seems generous, I know, but I did actually enjoy the first 100 pages, before everyone started driving me crazy.)
This book was a disappointment on so many levels. Erich should really stick to shorter works, because when he tries to write something longer, it just starts to feel aimless. It was just a bunch of people bumbling around, and we had to watch them bumble through their whole lives. Well, about 500 pages of their lives, anyway. They weren't really 'real' characters--I wouldn't know them if I saw them walking down the street. They were characters that were defined solely by what they did, not who they *were*. I also hoped the charachters/readers would wrestle more with questions of God, religion, etc., since the main characters are Rabbis and Priests, but God hardly came into these characters' consciousness at all. It was like being men of the cloth was just their job, not part of who they were--which can be a statement in itself, of course, but I don't think that was the case in this book. I think in this book, it was just laziness. He also passed by the chance to introduce some fabulous plot twists that would have bumped my rating up at least one star.
It was one of those books where I felt like the author felt like he could use his characters to show how smart he was, like we were really supposed to admire his characters, and all I did was roll my eyes because other people did admire them and they were so two-dimensional to me.
The characters:
Danny: Danny is the rabbi's son, destined to become the next rabbi in their Orthodox Jewish community. For some reason, Danny's chapters are told 1st person. Actually, if you just took all Danny's first person chapters and stringed them together to make a book, it probably would have been a lot more focused than this book. So, he's lauded as the only son. Goes to college, meets an atheist professor, decides he doesn't wanna be a Rabbi anymore, breaks his father's heart, sleeps with a prostitute who gives him good stock advice, becomes a millionaire, tries to buy his father's love back, but his father dies the day that he gave him the millions--still not forgiving his son. Son gets in trouble later on for embezzling money, loses everything, and becomes a traveling Rabbi. Marries a woman 20 years younger than him who he's desperately in love with after seeing her like once. Goes back to his Orthodox community and decides to be the kind of Rabbi his daddy wanted him to be all along.
Timothy: A bastard kid who got into lots of trouble as a kid. Hung out in the Jewish community some, met Deborah (Danny's sister). Kisses her once. She gets in big trouble and gets sent to Israel where Timmy can't see her no more. Timothy pines over her for the rest of his life. Has sex with her while he's a seminarian, but becomes a priest anyway. Keeps pining, pining, pining, over this woman he never really knew at all. At the end of the book, he leaves the priesthood for her.
Deborah: The nice Jewish girl. Gets sent to Israel as punishment for a kiss. Pines over Timothy. Joins a liberal Jewish community. Has sex with Timmy while he's in the seminary. Gets pregnant. Keeps the baby a secret. Along with her liberal Jewish community, makes up a story about how baby's daddy was nice Jewish boy who got killed in war. Goes back with son and lies in tow to the U.S. Never dates anyone 'cause she's pining over Timmy. Becomes a Rabbi herself. Pines over Timmy some more. Is really happy at the end when Timmy comes back for her, even though her son is royally screwed up from having been lied to his whole life and basically hates Timmy's entrance into his mom's and his life.
The thing that bothered me most about Deborah was that the author tried so hard to set her up as a liberated, feminist-y type woman, and yet she spent the whole fucking book pining over someone that she barely knew, and uprooted her son and left her rewarding job as a Rabbi because a psychologist told her all her son's problems were due to the fact that "he didn't have a man in his life to emulate." So she goes back to the liberal commune in Israel to expose her sonny-boy to some male role-models, where Timmy finds her, end of story, period.
I guess I'm getting sort of sick of the priest-forbidden-love plot. There's only so many variations you can do on that theme.
The one thing I appreciated about this book: The author obviously put a *lot* of research into it and did show sufficient respect for both the Jewish and Catholic traditions. And he spent 4 years on the book. It felt like it took that long for me to read it.
** (seems generous, I know, but I did actually enjoy the first 100 pages, before everyone started driving me crazy.)
Journal Entry 2 by Sedeara at Washington Cooperative Laundry Room in Duluth, Minnesota USA on Thursday, December 16, 2004
Released on Friday, December 17, 2004 at about 6:00:00 PM BX time (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) at Washington Cooperative Laundry Room in Duluth, Minnesota USA.
RELEASE NOTES:
If it doesn't get picked up within a few days, I'm releasing it somewhere else.
RELEASE NOTES:
If it doesn't get picked up within a few days, I'm releasing it somewhere else.
