All posts by Phil

Fiction, Reviews

Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin, Rebus #1

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Having read the fourteenth book in Ian Rankin’s John Rebus series, I looked up the first one, published in 1987. It was fairly different overall. I’ll have to read a few more to see whether this one or the other is the anomaly.

In Knots and Crosses, DS John Rebus is pulled away from all of his current cases to join the growing team going after the separate kidnappings of two pre-teen girls. At his first conference, they announce it has become a murder investigation, and they have as many as zero leads. Rebus and a younger officer are assigned to comb the M.O. files for possible leads–the worst mental drudge. The police get nowhere until the murderer finally presses his point, that his main goal is Rebus himself.

Rankin has earned a lot of praise for his use of Edinburgh in these novels. Though Rebus is an officer at the fictional Great London Road police station, other details are well grounded. One of the main ideas you get from this book is that Edinburgh is good city, filled with stone walls and solid people. Kidnapping and murdering random girls couldn’t happen in this city. But Rebus and his fellow officers are dragged into the long shadows of sinful Scottish men.

Knots and Crosses delivers a fairly good original story for the series hero. In A Question of Blood, everyone knows Rebus doesn’t talk about his Army days, but in these pages all of that is spelled out. We also learn Rebus is a Christian, which means something unclear. Maybe he had a churched upbringing (though thinking of his father, I don’t know why they would attend services). He seems to hold to rudimentary Christian tenets and seek hope in a Good News Bible, but his sexual morality is complete mess and he avoids the church as if he has been wounded there. I wonder if we will see more of his faith in other books.

The main thing I disliked about this book is how the perspective jumps between many characters: a few cops, a couple victims, a newspaper man. His editor gets a couple paragraphs. The murderer gets a few lines. I think the ole universal third person may have been a better narrator.

Fiction, Reading

Culling the Shelves of Bad Books

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Sometimes I browse a bookstore as I would other stores I visit while playing the tourist. I look at the many curious spines, letters, and colors, seeing the curiosity of one, the value of another, with little intension of buying either. Sometimes I go to a bookstore in hope of finding a few, specific titles or types of books or maybe anything by that guy who wrote those stories–you know the ones–about that cool thing, remember, and though I enter with hope, I must put it on a table somewhere to pick up something else, because I gradually despair of finding anything I want.

But there are times when I take a chance on a book I know nothing about. That’s when I run the risk of having my wife read it.

I’m a slow reader. If I wasn’t so good-looking, I’d be notably less successful than I am. My wife is fast reader, and I don’t mean by comparison to me. I can buy her a promising title from the used bookstore, and in two days, having read it through, she’ll ask me to take the trashy thing back.

I went to the used bookstore a couple weeks ago, carrying a mug of hope for reasons I don’t recall. Maybe it was our recent collection of trade-ins and having avoided the store for about a year. Inspired by Lars’s recent urban fantasy reviews, I wanted to find something fun and maybe good to try. So I went home with a steampunk novel, first of a series. Saying she needed to screen it for the kids, my wife read it immediately.

I think I read somewhere that nothing in steampunk was worth reading. It was all fan-fiction, heavily derivative. This book has to be step aside from that, because it was traditionally published by an author who has many other published books, but it isn’t good.

Getting all of this from my wife, the dialog is awful, particularly everything the heroine says. The plot is dragged down by her constantly wrestling over marrying someone instead of doing the adventure thing that you’d expect from a novel like this.

The devices and contraptions are interesting, even though they don’t move the story. The pirates are vile, needlessly dark, and disappear after their initial scuffle, which may be realistic but not fun. The zombie disease doesn’t make sense, and I don’t need to go on.

That’s the risk I run plucking a book off the shelf, being too kind to the cover art, and even reading the description or a random page. I’ve done that before to positive effect. More than that, I don’t need to buy books. I have many good ones on my shelves and more on that little Kindle thing that could spy on me if I didn’t put it to sleep with no wi-fi every day.

Fiction, Reviews

Starting Inspector Rebus Series in the Middle

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I think I picked up of Ian Rankin’s A Question of Blood at a library sale. I remember bringing it home along with a Brad Meltzer book. I didn’t know anything about the series, not even that this is the 14th in a total of 23 (which was released last October). A Question of Blood was published in 2004. It may be the third novel that features Siobhan Clarke as a main character.

Rankin doesn’t punish new readers for starting in the middle. Even with Siobhan’s name (which I looked up as I began reading), Rankin explains the Irish pronunciation (Shi-VAWN) and makes a point of it with character interaction to help us along. All of the characters are introduced appropriately so that new readers will not be lost among many names.

As Siobhan’s name is foreign to the Scottish characters in this series, so are many of native elements foreign to me. I loved various Scottish words and details that cropped up as I read. At least, I attributed them to Scottish culture. Maybe I’m just ignorant. The writing is tight and suspenseful, perhaps even restrained.

In A Question of Blood, Rebus gets called to Queensberry to offer perspective on a murder-suicide at a private school involving a former army special forces soldier, the son of judge, and the son of an MP. It’s clear the soldier snapped and decided to kills some school kids, but why those kids in the common room of Port Edgar Academy and not any of the students he passed on the way? Was there some vendetta? Did they know each other?

At the same time, Siohban has been stalked by a man she tried to put away for assault. She’s started scanning for him out of windows and watching her back more than usual. It’s been going on for three weeks, and suddenly the stalker’s house burns, killing him. A coincidental accident or is someone seeking revenge on her behalf?

I plan to pick up the first Inspector Rebus novel next to see if Rankin started off as strong a writer as he is in this book or grows into it latter on.

Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

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A Soldier’s Only Hope

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Lars’s Memorial Day post on Friday reminded me of a book I picked up several years ago in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It’s From the Flag to the Cross: Scenes and Incidences of Christianity in the Civil War, by US Army Chaplain Amos S Billingsley. The book has many notes and expressions of faith from those who came in touch with the Union chaplaincy during the war. Billingsley includes records of his own ministry and the people he spoke to in hospitals, prisons, and camps.

He tells the story of visiting the gangrene camp next to Hampton Hospital in November 1864-65 about midnight. He entered one soldier’s tent in the dim light of the moon, noticing a small candle burning within.

On approaching him, he warmly grasped my hand, and, upon inquiring how he was, he replied, “I am very weak; I don’t think I’m going to live long; and I have sent for you hoping you could administer a word of comfort, and write a letter of sympathy and consolation to my wife and children.” “I trust you were not without hope?” “Oh no! I have a glorious hope. Christ is my only hope, and he is growing more and more precious every hour.”

“The pious, heroic John Lambert, with his legs burned to the stumps, with his body pierced with ruthless halberds, with his fingers flaming with fire, with dying breath exclaimed, ‘None but Christ! NONE BUT CHRIST!’ Think you would be afraid to die?” “No, I think not. I die for my country, and, dying for Him who died for me, I have nothing to fear; I don’t fear death, thank God! I trust he will give me the victory over it.” “You seem to have it already.” “I have got the victory!” said the dying Rutherford and he left the world shouting glory. I asked him, “What word shall I send to your wife and dear children?” “Tell them I died happy in Christ. He lingered a few hours, and God took him home. How striking the transition! How glorious the change! From a lonely, dreary gangrene camp to the throne of God in heaven! Here, he wore a soldiers garb; there, robed in white, he wears a crown of glory, and bears palms of victory. I visited two other patients at the same call; one of which was so far gone, it was then too late to get his dying message to send home to comfort his bereaved friends. He was a good man. Such were my visits to this suffering camp.

Whether we spend our days on anger, reacting to the latest news prompt, or on sentimentality, wanting to get the family together for smiles and meals, or on kindness, building or rebuilding our communities, we have only one hope. Maybe we’ve lived constructive lives, earning the praise of our peers. Maybe we’ve wasted our lives on self-indulgence, which could also earn the praise of our peers. Nothing we do opens or closes more avenues of hope. We have only one, the work of Christ Jesus on the cross.

Because this is true, we can take comfort when someone professes new faith on his death bed, despite the life he leaves behind. We cannot judge a spiritual transformation when the subject has no opportunity to bear the fruit of his faith. Even then, we cannot judge a man’s heart perfectly. What we can do is look to Christ and point others to Him as well.

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Dante and the Stars

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This interview with astronomer Sperello di Serego Alighieri, a descendant of Dante Alighieri, gets into interesting territory.

Half the time it seems to me that things like string theory are attempts to get around the implications of the universe’s having a beginning, because string theorists don’t want it to.

The thing with those kinds of theories – you can call them theories, but it’s more speculative philosophy than science.

Because it is in principle untestable.

Yeah, it is not testable. It’s the same thing as multiverse theory, maybe there are many universes, OK, we can talk about it, but so what? It’s not testable. But even then, in a multiverse scenario, it is entirely possible to ask whether someone can have created all these universes. I don’t think that it is possible for science to say that God does not exist. But also the other way: religion should not close down inquiry into how the universe developed; this is up to scientists.

Then they get into Galileo and how Jesuits reformed the Chinese calendar.

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Strange Things Found in Books

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I have found a few casually interesting things in books over the years: old newspaper ads or a library card. Notes written in the margins have been the most engaging thing I’ve found. In fact, I have my mother’s Bible with many marginal notes. (She passed away two years ago this month.) One of these notes marks Isaiah 41:9-10 as my Dad’s verse.

Laurie Hartzel of the Star-Tribune collected reader submissions for strange things they have found in books, including a vintage postcard, a banana peel, and a diamond ring.

Fiction

“The Past Is Never as Past as We’d Like to Think”

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A strength of Erin Bartels’s 2019 debut novel We Hope for Better Things is its main story hook in the race riot in 1967 Detroit. A generational family drama that touches on the American Civil War, obvert and subtle hatred of colored people, and interracial relationships naturally feels like a Southern novel–at least it does to me. Telling a well-researched story from her neck of the woods, the complicated city of Detroit, Michigan, helps balance the typical narrative by showing how Yankees contributed to the slave systems of Southern states.

The story begins in modern day Detroit with an ambitious reporter, Elizabeth Balsam, meeting with a man who wants to ask a favor of her. She might be interested, if there’s a good story in it, but she’s in the middle of a potentially explosive investigation that is taking just about all of her emotional energy and creativity. When her investigation actually explodes in her face, she considers helping the man and maybe saving her career. The favor means looking up Nora Balsam, whom Elizabeth discovers is her great aunt living about 60 miles north in Lapeer, which is about 20 miles outside of Flint.

Before we get too far into Elizabeth’s interaction with Nora, the story turns back to Detroit 1963 and a younger Nora Balsam, who is looking for artwork to but at an exhibition. Instead she meets a good-looking photographer named William Rich and struggles to make sense of one of his photos on display, that of her father angrily reaching for the cameraman. Being as wealthy as she is, Nora hasn’t met many genuine people, that is eligible, young men, so she finds William’s bold interest in her appealing. You might call his interest reckless, because he is black and she’s white.

Once we understand a little more about Nora, we are pulled back to Lapeer 1861, where Mary and Nathaniel Balsam have begun to establish their farm. Nathaniel feels compelled to join the Union army to fight for the abolitionist ideas they have long discussed. That left Mary alone and pregnant with two housekeepers to manage everything. Of course, Nathaniel thought he would be home in several months, but three years later he had only returned once for a few days on furlough. His decisions in the field changed his family far more than his absence–he sent runaway slaves to Lapeer for safe harbor.

These three stories are skillfully woven together, holding the narrative tension well. I remember another novel set in Mississippi that tells three, interrelated stories at once, one of the three being comparatively dull. I was on the verge of skipping a section out of interest for the other story threads. We Hope for Better Things is engaging throughout. Questions raised in one thread begin to carry into the next.

With the publisher being Revell, you may think Bartels had to write in some explicit preaching or Xian exposition, but her faith comes through more subtly than that, in the faithfulness of the story arc.

Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash

Poetry

There was a DISTINGUISHED Old Fellow

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May 12th is Limerick Day, perhaps for the arbitrary reason any day is a national day of some kind. May 9th is Lost Sock Memorial Day as well as National Sleepover Day. May 17th is Cherry Cobbler Day, which must not be allowed to carryover into May 18th, because that, honey child, is Cheese Soufflé Day. There are so many of commemorative days for every day of the year it’s no wonder Congress can’t get anything passed between the cobbler and soufflé.

But I was talking about limericks, being an apt subject for the distinguished readers of this blog.

The form of the limerick is believed to have been created as a party or festival song that invited participants to spin their own verse of the marvelous attractions or mishaps of Limerick, Ireland. Each verse would be capped by a chorus inviting everyone up to Limerick. I get this from The Complete Limerick Book by Langford Reed, published in 1925.

Reed notes the artist and author Edward Lear is the name many people associate with limericks and could easily believe to be the one who created them whole clothe. Of all that he accomplished in his life, his Book of Nonsense is the main thing for which he is famous. Reed offers these lines on the subject of fame:

A goddess, capricious, is Fame;
You may strive to make noted your name
But she either neglects you
Or coolly selects you
For laurels distinct from your aim.

In honor of the day, let me repeat one of the most excellent of tongue-twisters, this one from Ogden Nash:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “let us flee!”
“Let us fly!” said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

Religion

How Does God Treat His Friends?

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Many months ago, I wrote a few blog posts about the book of Job because I had studied it while leaning on Christopher Ash’s excellent commentary in the Preaching the Word commentary series from Crossway. He has revisited that content for a new book no doubt aimed at a general readership.

The new book is called Trusting God in the Darkness. He answers a few questions about Job on the Crossway blog.

The central character, Job himself, is not just everyman, a human being in general. No, he is most emphatically a man who is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). The narrator tells us this in the first verse and God says it twice more (Job 1:8; 2:3). That is to say, Job is a believer walking through life with a clear conscience. The book of Job is—to quote the title of a book that first helped me get into studying Job—about how God treats his friends. It is about the struggles of a suffering and yet innocent believer.

How should we understand Job’s comforters? “Much of what they say seems to make a lot of sense,” but God rejects their words in the end.

When we read their speeches we need to think carefully. Sometimes they say things that are true but that don’t fit Job. They accuse him of being an unforgiven sinner, and he isn’t. Most seriously, there is no place in their thinking for innocent suffering (e.g., Job 4:7), which means that, in the end, there is no place in their theology for the cross of Christ.

Fiction

Stay Safe, Okay? Safer than You Are Now

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In First Things, Sohrab Ahmari describes a 1995 movie that looks like a commentary on 2020.

Safe with Julianne Moore and Xander Berkeley tells the story of a woman who has closed herself off from those around her. She comes to believe she is allergic to the modern world and, if not already, at least on the verge of becoming desperately ill. She takes refuge in a kind of spiritual camp in the desert to help keep the world away.

Ahmari describes the message of the camp: “Things are getting better out there in the dangerous outside world, thanks to ‘workplace sensitivity training’ and ‘multiculturalism,’ but meanwhile, the patients must avoid all risk, must remain at the center, and must avoid negative thoughts.”

Because we can control our world, if we only remain aware of it and ourselves. We can survive by receiving positivity and blocking out germs and whatever else the environment has to kill us.

Carol begins the movie in an alienating gated community—and ends it even more alienated, eventually in a literal safety pod. Rather than face the social-structural crises head-on—crises rooted in our modern obsession with individual mastery and autonomy—the safetyist “cure” requires an even more aggressively individualistic vision. As [Director] Haynes himself told an interviewer in 2015, “isolation becomes the problem and the answer to the problem.”