#872 Ragnarok! The Day the Gods Die- Randall Kenan

#872 Ragnarok! The Day the Gods Die- Randall Kenan

The Reverend Barden has been living in sin. His wife has not given him all he desires, so he has fallen into the arms of another woman. He is ashamed of this bow to temptation, but he is more ashamed of getting caught. His lover is now dying. He has lost his wife, his lover and the respect of his son.

“Who shall hide me now? I have no place to go. I am the living dead denied the grave.”

What does a shamed preacher hang onto. That’s right hope, it’s the only thing left.

“But without hope? He’s like those dried bones full of wind and sound, cut off from his parts. He is not alive but just exists. There is no life without hope. It is hope and only hope which gives his existence meaning.”

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#867 The Lighthouse- Anthony Grooms

#867 The Lighthouse- Anthony Grooms

A story told in two perspectives. Otie is in the mental home, but gets to visit church on Sunday. He watches as the congregation, mostly woman, is worked into frenzy by the young, attractive preacher. Then he gets called out and the Preacher comes over to cast out his demons. This is not the fist time, nor will it be the last time he needs saving. Watching from the back is his nephew, a college boy and a cynic. He doesn’t believe in all this and is hated by the preacher. The preacher believes book learning corrupts.

After the service, Otie goes back to his sinning ways and his nephew goes back to watching it all happen. He still goes to church, maybe for the entertainment or waiting to be taken by the spirit like everyone else.

Notable Passage: “When the commotion quiets down, the Holy Rollers get down to the real business of religion—collecting money.”

Rating: 7-6-6-7 Total= 26

#849 A Voice in the Night- Steven Millhauser

#849 A Voice in the Night- Steven Millhauser

This is an allegorical story about faith. Maybe not so allegorical as it references the book of Samuel from the bible. There are three arcs that are being told in this tale. The first is a re-telling of the boy Samuel who was called in the night by Gog in the house of Eli. The second is about a boy in modern time that was scared by the Samuel story and was kept awake waiting in vain for his name to be called. The third is that same boy, now 68 near death looking back questioning his life and wondering why faith never came.

The boy’s story is interesting. Some biblical stories are outright frightening when heard as a child; booming voices, burning bushes, angry vengeance, it will keep you up at night.

“But the voice in the night is as scary as witches. The voice in the night knows you’re their, even though you’re hidden in the dark. If the voice calls your name, you have to answer. The boy imagines the voice calling his name. It comes from the ceiling. It comes from the walls. It’s like a terrible touch all over his body. He doesn’t want to hear the voice, but if he hears it, he’ll have to answer.”

That’s the point I guess, to scare you into faith. But what if you do take it all literally and wait for the voice to call you in the dark. When it doesn’t come, you think you weren’t chosen. Then what? How long do you wait for the voice? Is faith something you wait for, or is it something you search for? And the most intriguing question to me is, if you had a choice, would you want to hear that voice calling you? There are no half-measures for those who have been chosen.

“If the voice calls your name, your other life is over. There’s no going back.”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#640 The Beginning of the End- Fatima Shaik

#640 The Beginning of the End- Fatima Shaik

Mr. Henri Chapon wasn’t your ordinary New Orleans Eccentric. He came from a famous and respected NOLA family. Only now he had been disowned from that family. He was struck, mostly by religion but also by a bit of lunacy. He became a minister.

“Chapon was both too emotional and too opportunistic: first, as a salesman and now as a minister.”

He set up a tabernacle in his home and began finding miracles in the world around him. People were not sure what to think, sure he was crazy but he was likeable as well. His good works about town were truly good works and his sermons—or passion plays—he performed on his porch were entertaining at least. He touched the life of the widow across the street. One saved life is sometime all you need.

Over his four week ministry, he set about to painting his prophesy on a white plywood sign he erected in front of his house. He would paint a single word each week and ruminate on that word’s godly meanings. By the time the sign was complete, the prophesy would be fulfilled.

Rating: 8-8-7-7 Total- 30

#594 Anyone Else But Me- Lucia Perillo

#594 Anyone Else But Me- Lucia Perillo

Prairie Rose doesn’t know who her father is. Her mother Ruth either doesn’t know or won’t tell her enough information for her to track him down. After all these years, it is becoming harder and less likely she will ever find out. It would, in a way, take a miracle.

Oddly enough, Rose’s current job is working maintenance for the town’s Miracle Management Response Team. Chemical runoff and environmental conditions has caused the image of the Virgin Mary to appear on a seawall causing all sorts of havoc for the area. People coming from all around just for a look, usually leaving trash and spending money—and isn’t that a perfect description of modern life: leaving trash, spending money, and staring at a wall looking for meaning, waiting for a miracle.

The woman are polar opposites and are each in need of different things. Ruth is looking for peace, while Rose is looking for answers. “Prairie Rose doesn’t understand how her mother could be satisfied with so little; Ruth doesn’t understand how a person’s life could accommodate much more.”

Ruth is kind of a modern take of people’s view of the Virgin Mary. She keeps pretty silent and yet everyone has an opinion about her—she is promiscuous, she is a nun, she is deaf, etc. Eventually unless protected and bolstered by faith, all miracles fade and wash back into the ocean.

Rating: 8-8-7-7 Total= 30

#530 Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side- Nathan Englander

#530 Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side- Nathan Englander

Nathan is an apostate, someone who has renounced religion and connection to their faith. Although it’s not as easy at that. This is a story broken up in 63 sections. Nathan loses his girlfriend because he is closed off about his past. Although his family is thoroughly Jewish he doesn’t feel that long, deep connection. He feels his life is shallow in the shadow of what should be a rich history.

“But what do you do if you’re American and have no family history and all your most vivid childhood memories are only the plots of sitcoms, if even your dreams, when pieced together, are the snippets of movies that played in your ear while you slept?”

His girlfriend, a Bosnian on the other hand feels a strong connection to her lineage.

“Her family tree is written into the endpapers of a bible whose leather cover has worn soft as a glove. She was raised in the house in which her mother was raised, and her mother’s mother, and in which, believe it or not, her great-grandmother was born.”

As Nathan explores his family history he finds secrets, lies, and hidden truths everywhere. The truth is sometimes hard to track down, and maybe it should stay hidden in the past.

Notable Passage: “It’s not only the past that can be altered and forgotten and lost to the world. It’s real time now. It’s streaming. The present can be undone, too.”

Rating: 10-9-9-9 Total= 37

#502 This Blessed House- Jhumpa Lahiri

#502 This Blessed House- Jhumpa Lahiri

Sanjeev “was lonely with an excessively generous income for a single man.” His career is going well and his family has arranged a marriage to a younger woman named Twinkle. Like her name would suggest, she is a free spirit. “It was a quality he did not understand. It made him feel stupid, as if the world contained hidden wonders he could not anticipate, or see,”

They have just moved into their new house and find Christian artifacts all over the house. They are not Christian, but Twinkle is enamored with the trinkets and insists that they not only keep them, but display them openly on their mantel.

“They didn’t bother her, these scattered, unsettled matters. She seemed content with whatever clothes she found at the front of the closet, with whatever magazine was lying around, with whatever song was on the radio—content yet curious.”

She won’t get rid of the paraphernalia and he relents, although when all of his work friends and colleagues come for their housewarming he is terrified of the impression it will make. His guest, it turns out, are so taken with his wife and her stories of hunting down these treasures throughout their new house, that they all as a group go hunting in the attic to find the piece-de-resistance. Sanjeev is the only one not enjoying himself, and he is once again literally left standing alone.

Rating: 9-9-9-9 Total= 36

#495 Peep Show- Nathan Englander

#495 Peep Show- Nathan Englander

Allen Feinberg looks down at his $500 shoes he just scuffed and is stricken at how far he has come, or worse how much he has changed. His name changed to Fein, his marriage to a Gentile all come to him with the backdrop of the new, family friendly Times Square that surrounds him.

He sees one of the last remaining “Peep Shows” promising a visual and sensual nirvana for only twenty-five cents. He goes in for the first time since he was a kid. Not much has changed inside that den of lurid desire. But his mind starts playing tricks as the guilt builds up—not only the guilt of being married and going to a peep show, but guilt of how far from his Jewish roots he has strayed. The dancing women turn into his rabbis and his psychologist.

“The rabbis’ return is a lot for him to process. He has worked hard at breaking from their world and he doesn’t remember ever wanting it back.”

All he wanted was a little harmless peek, not of flesh but of his past, of the world that has been left behind, but he finds himself at a spiritual crossroads.

“Where the rabbis are involved, there is always a path to be followed. Either you stay on it or stray into darkness: This is the choice that they offer. And, much as Allen feels bitter and lied to for all these years, he half wishes he could live in their realm, where a man is religious or he is not, a good husband or bad.”

Yes, things have changed, and choices have been made, but the window for your soul will stay open, it doesn’t close—but do you want to go through it or don’t you?

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35

#468 Lemonade- Maxine Clair

#468 Lemonade- Maxine Clair

On 10^th street in Rattlebone, three girls play their summer game called Lemonade. They are interrupted one day by the whitest lady thay have ever seen. She is dressed in an all white nuns outfit and starts telling them bible stories. The girls call her Sister Joan of Arc.

She is a follower of the Mother Mary and gives the girls rosary beads to secretly honor the matriarchal deity. She also blesses Puddin, who is a slow (probably autistic)  brother of Wanda. Puddin’ startles the neighborhood when he can play back the Moonlight Sonata after hearing in just once.

Sister Joan claims the credit for Mary in delivering such a miracle, but Irene’s mother sees that as blasphemous, there is only on God, and only he can claim such miracles.

“God is jealous…he can whip you worse than any power on earth can, so don’t you go trying him.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29

#467 A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love- Toure

#467 A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love- Toure

As if you couldn’t already tell by the title, we are back in Toure’s fictional metropolis of Soul City. Can’t you feel it? Today is a sad day in Soul City. Today is the funeral of the much beloved and equally maligned Revren Daddy Love.

“Daddy Love had not been a young person for many years, but he had made himself into a force of nature so great that people were shocked to discover that dying was something he could do.”

“Daddy Love was colossal, Freckles on his high-yellow skin as large as dimes, a belly as great as a jumbo TV, a mouth that made mailboxes jealous, and a frame so titanic he would just swallow a girl up with one of his patented postservice hugs.”

Daddy Love, as his name suggests, was a ladies man. Having had a go at nearly all the woman of his congregation no matter their looks or marital status. “Daddy Love’s love was as blind as faith and as democratic as the sun.”

There is a ton of dark humor, social commentary and great satire in here, but it’s also just great fun stuff to read. Daddy Love’s church was St. Valentine’s Blessed Temple of Godly Love, Sanctified Ascension, and the Holy Glissando, located in Brooklyn at the corner of Grace Street and Divine Avenue in an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“And after a while people came to like using the drive-in window for confession.”

Sometimes faith, love, wrong, righteous, sin, and heaven are all the same thing, wrapped up in a man that is quite literally “Larger Than Life.”

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#446 The Steviewondermobile- Toure

#446 The Steviewondermobile- Toure

We are in Toure’s invented municipality, Soul City. “Soul City was a place where God entered through the speakers and love was measured in decibles.” There were at least twenty-five verified religions in Soul City, all based on Soul music of course.

Huggy Bear Jackson was a Stevie-ite (as were his buddies Mojo, Boozoo, and Groovy Lou) and built a mobile shrine to his idol. The vehicle that cruised Freedom Street or Funky Boulevard would break down all the time, couldn’t go more than twenty five and guzzled gas, but it had a kickin’ sound system that would only play Stevie Wonder. It was rigged so that any other music was put in, it would be immediately spit out. Now, That’s musical devotion!

This collection is going to be a blast!

“But it was Huggy Bear’s world and in Huggy Bear’s world the music could never die. So he sat in the Steveiewondermobile, stuck at the corner of Freedom and Rhythm, chilling with Groovy Lou and Boozoo to the soaring sounds of Stevie’s seamless soul stew and the world he saw with his so wonderfully clear inner vision.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29

#438 Jerusalem- Neil Gaiman

#438 Jerusalem- Neil Gaiman

Morrison wanted to go to Greece for vacation, but his wife convinced him to go instead to Jerusalem to see the biblical sites. It had a big effect on them.

“Jerusalem…was like a deep pool, where time had settled too thickly. It had engulfed him, engulfed both of them, and he could feel the pressure of time pushing him up and out. Like swimming down too deep.”

Their guide told them about Jerusalem Fever, a light affliction that hits tourists at a pretty alarming rate. The weight of the city’s history hits them so strong they wish to exist in the city as it was thousands of years ago. They strip themselves of their modern clothes and don bed sheets as togas and walk the city in a trance. This happened to Morrison’s wife.

“Perhaps, he thought, it isn’t madness. Perhaps the cracks are just deeper there, or the sky is thin enough that you can hear, when God talks to his prophets. But nobody stops to listen any longer.”

The fever always subsides when taken out of the city, but the memory has stuck with Morrison, and he wonders what it is like to feel that strong an emotion to be struck with a faith so absolute.

“Sometimes he wondered what it had felt like inside her head, that day, hearing the voice of God through the golden-colored stones, but truly, he did not want to know. It was better not to.”

Maybe he should stop and listen.

Rating: 9-10-10-9 Total= 38

#433 What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank- Nathan Englander

#433 What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank- Nathan Englander

You immediately know two things from reading this title: one, it’s paying homage to the great story by Raymond Carver, and two, the subject matter is going to be pretty serious.

Deb and Shoshana were friend at Yeshiva twenty years ago. Shoshana and her husband have been living an ultra Hasidic life in Israel and are visiting Deb and her husband in Florida. They have a long, tense, emotional discussion over what it means to be Jewish.

Most of it focuses on whether it’s healthy to make the Holocaust the defining characteristic of your life, culture, religion. They tell a story about two Holocaust survivors that realize after forty-years that their camp tattoo numbers are only three apart. The observers expect an emotional recognition of this incredible event—surviving and existing this long after having been so close to each other at the beginning –but instead the man with the higher number just say that it proves that he cut the line back then just as he does now. Meaning, that he wanted his life defined by his own actions not by others from his past.

Obviously, these discussions will cause much debate and anger and tears. The part I found the most interesting was talking about the difference between religion and culture and the dangers of tying one with the other.

“With religion comes ritual. Culture is nothing. Culture is some construction of the modern world. And because of that, it is not fixed; it is ever changing, and a weak way to bind generations. It’s like taking two pieces of metal, and instead of making a nice weld, you hold them together with glue.”

This was brilliantly crafted with impeccable dialogue. I’ll let others more qualified analyze the meaning and religious aspects of this story.

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#405 Ordinary Sins- Kirsten Valdez Quade

#405 Ordinary Sins- Kirsten Valdez Quade

Crystal works in the parish office. She took the job to pay some bills, and never intended to stay long. But now she is single, and pregnant, and her needs run further than money.

Father Paul is a beloved Priest, seemingly perfect and without sin, minus the former addiction with alcohol. But being sober for the last twenty-eight years, even that seems like a virtue. The New priest assigned to the Parish, Father Leon is traditional, cold, and judgmental.

The sins of the past, and present haunt each one in this story. Where there seems to be the strongest support, may lay the largest weakness.

Notable Passage: “Impressive how efficiently her subconscious tallied, dismantled, and blended together her sins, molding them all into a tidy and disturbing little narrative as persistent and irksome as pine sap.”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#364 Family Reunion- Kirsten Valdez-Quade

#364 Family Reunion- Kirsten Valdez-Quade

Claire lived with her mother, her step-dad, and her sister in a Mormon-dominated community. They were atheist, and for a young girl being that kind of different was hard:

-“By age eleven, Claire understood that the best way to overcome her disadvantages was to convert.”

-“At church and school, Claire hid the truth about her own family”

-“Claire became adept at playing Mormon, and while she never fooled anyone, at least she didn’t offend anyone, either.”

She found a good friend, Morgan, who didn’t seem to mind their differences, until Claire was invited to go with Morgan’s family to a family reunion. Only it wasn’t a family reunion. Claire could either be saved, cast into the outer darkness, or just freaked out by another disturbed, alcoholic parent.

Overall I’m enjoying this collection of stories. However, as in many of them, this one could have been pared down by ten or so pages. I find too much dialogue that doesn’t add to the story much. In a longer medium, such excess might add pace, or character depth, but in a short story just adds length.

After one whole year of short stories, I’m starting to believe that great short stories have meaning or intent behind most of its content. A short story has a certain shape based on where it’s headed and where it’s been. If there is something we don’t need to hear, most likely it should be cut. Of course, there are always exceptions, and I reserve the right to be wrong on this or change my mind.

Rating: 7-8-7-7= 29

#301 The Five Wounds- Kirsten Valdez Quade

#301 The Five Wounds- Kirsten Valdez Quade

Amedeo is a criminal, a bad seed, a scourge on the community. He is a 33 year-old out of shape, jobless, useless man, and has a 15 year old daughter that is about to give birth to a grandson. He is about to become Jesus.

It is holy week and the town is preparing for their Calvario, the stations of the cross procession. They chose Amedeo this year hoping that picking the wretched man would bring salvation to him and the community. It is a sacrifice.

The more real the act is the closer to God the portrayer of Jesus gets. The flagellations of the past have gone as far as actually nailing the man to his cross. It can be: “More real even than taking communion…You got a chance to thank Jesus, to hurt with him just a little.”

“If he can up there in front of the whole town and do a performance so convincing he’ll substantiate right there on the cross into something real. Total redemption in one gesture, if only he can do it right”

Amedeo has taken his role to heart, and as the sins of his past flash before his eyes, the more he needs redemption. He is beaten, spit on, bleed, humiliated, and the town knows it made the right choice. For unto us a child is born, and may its sins be washed away.

This is a pretty intense story, but one well deserving of attention. You don’t need to understand the religious nature to feel the emotions of the characters.

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35