The Holographic Reading Club meets every Tuesday, and one evening the subject turned to Christian Fiction.
“You mean devoid of any resemblance to real life?” one of us interjected.
“The stories are superficial, with stilted characters, unrealistic conflicts and predictable conclusions,” claimed another.
“Give us examples,” I challenged him. He dredged up several book titles, all of which one astute member identified as having been written at least a decade ago. Homework was assigned: we would each select a novel published within the last year and return to the next gathering with a critique.
“My first problem,” reported Trina, a pony-tailed college student, “was trying to find anything in my church library that was written after 1997. The woman who looks after it said she couldn't justify buying new books because not enough people in the congregation were borrowing the ones they already have. I finally went to the Christian bookstore and bought one.” She waved Mozart's Sister by Nancy Moser (Bethany House) for everyone to see.
“Is it any good? What's it about?”
“It's the story of Wolfgang Mozart's older sister, Nannerl, who is just as musically talented as he is but given the times in which she lives, is left in her brother's shadow and struggles to figure out God's will for her. Moser based the story on actual family correspondence and Mozart biographies so it feels very authentic.”
“What a coincidence,” elderly Miss Emily Jane spoke up. “I also chose one with a musical focus from the mid-1700s. The Longing Season by Christine Schaub (Bethany House) is a fictionalized biography of John Newton and what led to his writing of the beloved hymn Amazing Grace. The descriptive writing is excellent — both the locales and the characters are very well depicted.”
“Obviously you two made better choices than I did,” said Donald, a retired clergyman. “Mine is also historical fiction, but the history is so badly distorted that the inaccuracies get in the way of the story. The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan (Touchstone) refers to an anointed one who will possess the ability to decipher ancient clues and help a 21st-century secret organization locate a hidden manuscript said to have been written by Mary Magdalene.”
“Hmmm, sounds rather familiar. So will the Church be up in arms over this one?”
“Not likely. Despite its reference to biblical characters, there is such a plethora of implausible details that the whole thing falls into an indefinable chasm somewhere between folklore and fantasy.”
As the laughter dissipated, the kindergarten teacher, Marcy Abbot, spoke.
“I feel a bit like a rebel because my book is distinctly children's literature.” She held up her book. “The Adventures of the God Detectives by Nancy Reeves and Linnea Good (Wood Lake) is a collection of stories designed to help children explore ways in which God invites people into a relationship with him.”
“Are the stories and characters believable?”
“Most of them are,” said Marcy, “although the dialogue is sometimes implausible. Can you imagine an eight-year-old at a party thinking about war and bursting out with, 'Oh, no, I'm going to drown in sadness?'”
One by one the rest of our club members offered their comments on the books they had chosen to read. After the last volume was added to the pile on the oval coffee table, we sat back to summarize our findings.
“Not all of them, but the majority of these books surprised us by being better than we thought they would be,” admitted Trina finally. “Obviously bad writing still exists, regardless of the decade in which it was written, but that's just as true in secular fiction.”
According to the Christian Book Association Christian product sales are estimated at more than $4.2 billion, with a full quarter of that from books.
“Maybe we just have to keep reading to find the good ones,” I said with a wink. The future of the Holograph Reading Club would be secure for a while yet.
