"THE DEPORTEES AND OTHER STORIES,"
by Roddy Doyle
Ireland has changed.
The Ireland that for so many years forced its native population to leave has in recent times, seen a booming economy, so people struggling in other parts of the world are flocking to this new land of opportunity, Ireland.
Thank God Roddy Doyle is alive and well and writing to capture the turn around, and doing it in the manner that causes laugh-out-loud reading.
As always with Doyle, the humor percolates from human nature. His fiction takes advantage of the typically funny way the Irish have of dealing with life. He celebrates the joys in understated ways, but more often Doyle taps the embarrassing moments, exposing those insecurities that anyone human might laugh at, getting the largest chuckles from the instances when bigotry is revealed for what it is, when his characters realize the foot they've put into their own mouths, when David bests Goliath because of the big oaf's self-righteousness.
"The Deportees" is the longest of the eight short stories, and arguably the richest. Doyle revives Jimmy Rabbitte, the main character of "The Commitments," his story about a young Irish lad who loves soul music and puts together a soul band.
Rabbitte is grown up now, but he still loves music enough to name his children -- besides Jimmy Two -- Mahalia and Marvin, and wants to name the one his wife is carrying Aretha if its a girl, Smokey if it's a boy.
He gets the idea for a band composed of members from around the globe who have come to call Ireland home, and the fun gets going big time as Jimmy opens auditions.
In all the stories, "The Deportees" included, the hard edge of dealing with racial and national prejudice rides right along side the humor.
In "57% Irish," Doyle takes on the idea of how Irish you have to be considered one, and in "Black Hoodie" he's crafted a combination of "Black Like Me" and "Ferris Bueler's Day Off" that points a finger at many of our biases -- and you don't have to live on the Emerald Isle to see them in our own society and in ourselves.
He also has the wonderful ability to put himself into his characters and let them speak about their situation. And, if we learn a little bit about what a refugee to Ireland sees and feels, maybe -- just maybe -- we'll be a bit more sympathetic to the immigrants who've come to our own land and our own communities in search of work, safety and freedom.
Fair warning: Some of the human is earthy and sexual; this is a book for mature audiences. -- bz
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Good tools for passing on the faith
"Learning Centers for Advent and Lent,"
by Doris Murphy
Doris Murphy is doing her best to make it painless for families to grow in their Catholic faith.
From her experience as Director of Faith Formation at St. Bridget Parish in River Falls, Wis., Murphy has gathered easy projects that parents can work on with their children, projects that will help these "first teachers" of their young ones develop the foundation for a life enriched by the knowledge and traditions of Catholicism.
As she has for First Reconciliation, First Eucharist and the Whole Community in earlier books put out by Twenty-Third Publications, Murphy utilizes the learning center approach to enable parents to be those first teachers of the faith that they are called to be for the seasons of Advent and Lent, too. In the learning center methodology, the parish gathers needed material and instructions, then invites parents to use age-appropriate activities that have hands-on tasks, that invite talking with their children about their faith, all the time reinforcing material the children may be learning in their faith formation textbooks and classes.
It's handing on the faith through example, through family rituals and through conversation. As important as the projects' purposes are, maybe even more important is the time a parent spends with a child around something of a religious nature: It enables adults -- the most influential people in a child's life -- to both tell and show a child that their own faith is important to them and that it's a faith full of meaning and history, something to be greatly valued, remembered and cherished.
For Advent and Lent, Murphy's workbook of just over 100 pages offers fun, easy, purposeful ideas that any parish, any director of faith formation, any catechist or any parent will find helpful.
It's a how-to book from the word go, full of practical projects and turn-key materials, and DREs might find these ideas are worth a try. If they work in River Falls, Wis., maybe they'll work for you. -- bz
by Doris Murphy
Doris Murphy is doing her best to make it painless for families to grow in their Catholic faith.
From her experience as Director of Faith Formation at St. Bridget Parish in River Falls, Wis., Murphy has gathered easy projects that parents can work on with their children, projects that will help these "first teachers" of their young ones develop the foundation for a life enriched by the knowledge and traditions of Catholicism.
As she has for First Reconciliation, First Eucharist and the Whole Community in earlier books put out by Twenty-Third Publications, Murphy utilizes the learning center approach to enable parents to be those first teachers of the faith that they are called to be for the seasons of Advent and Lent, too. In the learning center methodology, the parish gathers needed material and instructions, then invites parents to use age-appropriate activities that have hands-on tasks, that invite talking with their children about their faith, all the time reinforcing material the children may be learning in their faith formation textbooks and classes.
It's handing on the faith through example, through family rituals and through conversation. As important as the projects' purposes are, maybe even more important is the time a parent spends with a child around something of a religious nature: It enables adults -- the most influential people in a child's life -- to both tell and show a child that their own faith is important to them and that it's a faith full of meaning and history, something to be greatly valued, remembered and cherished.
For Advent and Lent, Murphy's workbook of just over 100 pages offers fun, easy, purposeful ideas that any parish, any director of faith formation, any catechist or any parent will find helpful.
It's a how-to book from the word go, full of practical projects and turn-key materials, and DREs might find these ideas are worth a try. If they work in River Falls, Wis., maybe they'll work for you. -- bz
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Have Yourself a Bloody Little Christmas
"The Spy Who Came for Christmas,"
by David Morrell
Think Rambo having a Christmas Eve change of heart -- well, in part at least.
Think a geopolitical way to look at the biblical story of Christ's birth.
Think terrorism on a snowy stage on the holiest night of the year.
"The Spy Who Came for Christmas" is all of the above. When a planted American spy decides he can't go along with the latest assignment the Russian Mafia has called on him to carry out -- to kidnap a baby, a baby that's suppose to be a symbol of world peace -- the action goes at a pretty crisp pace, for the most part.
There's Arab bad guys and spousal abuse and alcoholism and Soviet Communism and religion all mixed together in a story that teeter-totters between Christian principles and graphic violence. When this is made into a film -- maybe a made-for-TV one at least -- there will be blood all over the screen.
The only slow part is when the good-guy spy tells a way-out version of the Journey of the Magi; they become spies for Persia intent of causing disruption of Herod's rule. Interesting -- but gosh does it take a long time to tell.
Calling "The Spy Who Came for Christmas" a page-turner would be a bit of a stretch, and it's an admittedly okay yarn. But Morrell's name and Christmas in the title is sure to be a winner in the marketplace. -- bz
by David Morrell
Think Rambo having a Christmas Eve change of heart -- well, in part at least.
Think a geopolitical way to look at the biblical story of Christ's birth.
Think terrorism on a snowy stage on the holiest night of the year.
"The Spy Who Came for Christmas" is all of the above. When a planted American spy decides he can't go along with the latest assignment the Russian Mafia has called on him to carry out -- to kidnap a baby, a baby that's suppose to be a symbol of world peace -- the action goes at a pretty crisp pace, for the most part.
There's Arab bad guys and spousal abuse and alcoholism and Soviet Communism and religion all mixed together in a story that teeter-totters between Christian principles and graphic violence. When this is made into a film -- maybe a made-for-TV one at least -- there will be blood all over the screen.
The only slow part is when the good-guy spy tells a way-out version of the Journey of the Magi; they become spies for Persia intent of causing disruption of Herod's rule. Interesting -- but gosh does it take a long time to tell.
Calling "The Spy Who Came for Christmas" a page-turner would be a bit of a stretch, and it's an admittedly okay yarn. But Morrell's name and Christmas in the title is sure to be a winner in the marketplace. -- bz
Monday, July 14, 2008
Know D-Day like never before
"THE STEEL WAVE,"
by Jeff Shaara
You'll feel like you're in on the planning of the Normandy invasion with Ike and Monty.
You'll ride the landing craft with the foot soldiers as they near Omaha Beach.
You'll drop from the sky with the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne.
And you be there as so many of the men who landed in France on June 6, 1944 died in order to free the world from tyranny.
The middle novel of Jeff Shaara's three-part World War II saga rivals the film "Saving Private Ryan" for realism. War is hell, as we've heard, but Shaara pounds in the point.
His reader-gripping fiction puts you right in the violence of the battles, the mental strain of those leading the attack that started the end of Hitler's Third Reich, the political hurdles that challenged Eisenhower and his foe across the English Channel, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.
So much has been written about D-Day, so much known through film, that Shaara's work in a couple of instances seemed less than original. In fact, when they made those great war epics, good screen writers may have been using some of the same source material that Shaara did for "The Steel Wave." Insight into Rommel may be the most enlightening chapters.
But where this book is at its best is jumping from the plane and walking in the boot steps of Sgt. Jesse Adams, a real-life soldier whose ordeal leading a platoon as it fights its way across the hedgerow country of France is what brings drama and punch to "The Steel Wave." Finding out what happens to Sgt. Adams and many of the other players in the Normandy invasion is a fitting end to a very nice read. -- bz
by Jeff Shaara
You'll feel like you're in on the planning of the Normandy invasion with Ike and Monty.
You'll ride the landing craft with the foot soldiers as they near Omaha Beach.
You'll drop from the sky with the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne.
And you be there as so many of the men who landed in France on June 6, 1944 died in order to free the world from tyranny.
The middle novel of Jeff Shaara's three-part World War II saga rivals the film "Saving Private Ryan" for realism. War is hell, as we've heard, but Shaara pounds in the point.
His reader-gripping fiction puts you right in the violence of the battles, the mental strain of those leading the attack that started the end of Hitler's Third Reich, the political hurdles that challenged Eisenhower and his foe across the English Channel, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.
So much has been written about D-Day, so much known through film, that Shaara's work in a couple of instances seemed less than original. In fact, when they made those great war epics, good screen writers may have been using some of the same source material that Shaara did for "The Steel Wave." Insight into Rommel may be the most enlightening chapters.
But where this book is at its best is jumping from the plane and walking in the boot steps of Sgt. Jesse Adams, a real-life soldier whose ordeal leading a platoon as it fights its way across the hedgerow country of France is what brings drama and punch to "The Steel Wave." Finding out what happens to Sgt. Adams and many of the other players in the Normandy invasion is a fitting end to a very nice read. -- bz
Thursday, July 3, 2008
'To forgive, divine'
"The Forgiveness Book,"
by Alice Camille & Paul Boudreau
and
"The Power of Forgiveness,"
by Kenneth Briggs
Two very different approaches tackling the same subject isn't unique. Two very different books tackling the same subject happens frequently.
But that authors tackle the same subject for the same reason -- that a book on forgiveness has never been more needed -- maybe that's a message that the subject is not just interesting but vital.
Just over 100 pages long -- counting the useful and worthwhile appendix -- "The Forgiveness Book" is an easy read that offers countless good reasons for making a "divine" response when others err.
Camille, an award-winning writer and Father Boudreau, an oft-published priest-columnist, come at the rationale for forgiveness from an admittedly Catholic perspective. This is a little book laced with down-to-earth reasoning that explains significant theology in simple, easily understood language.
Alternatives no bargain
They acknowledge that forgiveness is "an ugly job," but that "the alternative to forgiveness is far uglier: hardened hearts, broken relationships, memories full of shrapnel, and families or communities paralyzed and divided."
If we don't choose to forgive, we get trapped in the addictive pattern of condemnation, blaming, open hostility, self-righteousness, hidden resentment, cold anger, cynicism -- the list goes on and on -- and the one we do the most damage to is ourselves, because not to forgive "weighs us down, saps our energy, hurts our bodies and leaves us weary."
There is a platitude or two of advice here, but most helpful is a brief, seven-point list of what forgiveness is -- and what it is not. Importantly, the authors aren't afraid to address the concept of sin, and do so in the healthy express of "missing the mark" in what we ought to be aiming at in our actions, decisions and relationships.
They stress that forgiveness is a choice, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation gets high marks as a structure that makes that choice easier.
Camille and Boudreau summarize their work well:
"Forgiveness is not just a thing nice people do. It's not a tactic we might consider for personal improvement or to tidy up our spiritual lives. As the world we live in spirals toward greater feats of injustice, greed, violence and bigotry, the reasons to forgive mount astronomically. The cost of unforgiveness, too, becomes ever more apparent. . . . The human race must learn to forgive, to practice forgiveness, to choose it, to seek it, to value it, and to want it. That means each of us individually must do the same, because the whole world begins in the human heart."
From film to print
Kenneth Briggs' "The Power of Forgiveness" is based on a film by Martin Doblmeier and delves into the topic by looking at specific instances of forgiveness and analyzing them, then going several steps deeper.
The most recent, the murder spree that left five Amish schoolchildren dead and five wounded in a Pennsylvania classroom, is the opening to view forgiveness from the religious perspective. The most interesting portion of this was Briggs' parsing of the idea that the Amish' forgiveness of the madman murderer was "a spiritual reflex," something the Amish learn "by watching parents and neighbors forgive and by looking at the example of Jesus."
Several of the world's religions get a similar analysis.
A section on the sociological perspective wonders if those who forgive may be healthier than those who don't. Another chapter discusses how very difficult -- even impossible -- forgiveness can seem. There's brief mention of the death penalty debate and the film "Dead Man Walking," plus the complex grief of a mother of a New York City firefighter who died on 9/11, and even a few paragraphs that touch upon the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
The most interesting quote from that latter part?
"Somehow a refusal to pardon guilty priests provides a balance to years of having forgiven them too much. . . . For most lawyers fighting for huge cash settlements, forgiveness is unthinkable, even laughable."
There's much more, but let me recommend this book by quoting from one quoted in it, author and lecturer Marianne Williamson:
"At a time when we see so much evil, we are called upon . . . to stand for the possibility of human redemption that turns even the hardest of hearts." -- bz
by Alice Camille & Paul Boudreau
and
"The Power of Forgiveness,"
by Kenneth Briggs
Two very different approaches tackling the same subject isn't unique. Two very different books tackling the same subject happens frequently.
But that authors tackle the same subject for the same reason -- that a book on forgiveness has never been more needed -- maybe that's a message that the subject is not just interesting but vital.
Just over 100 pages long -- counting the useful and worthwhile appendix -- "The Forgiveness Book" is an easy read that offers countless good reasons for making a "divine" response when others err.
Camille, an award-winning writer and Father Boudreau, an oft-published priest-columnist, come at the rationale for forgiveness from an admittedly Catholic perspective. This is a little book laced with down-to-earth reasoning that explains significant theology in simple, easily understood language.
Alternatives no bargain
They acknowledge that forgiveness is "an ugly job," but that "the alternative to forgiveness is far uglier: hardened hearts, broken relationships, memories full of shrapnel, and families or communities paralyzed and divided."
If we don't choose to forgive, we get trapped in the addictive pattern of condemnation, blaming, open hostility, self-righteousness, hidden resentment, cold anger, cynicism -- the list goes on and on -- and the one we do the most damage to is ourselves, because not to forgive "weighs us down, saps our energy, hurts our bodies and leaves us weary."
There is a platitude or two of advice here, but most helpful is a brief, seven-point list of what forgiveness is -- and what it is not. Importantly, the authors aren't afraid to address the concept of sin, and do so in the healthy express of "missing the mark" in what we ought to be aiming at in our actions, decisions and relationships.
They stress that forgiveness is a choice, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation gets high marks as a structure that makes that choice easier.
Camille and Boudreau summarize their work well:
"Forgiveness is not just a thing nice people do. It's not a tactic we might consider for personal improvement or to tidy up our spiritual lives. As the world we live in spirals toward greater feats of injustice, greed, violence and bigotry, the reasons to forgive mount astronomically. The cost of unforgiveness, too, becomes ever more apparent. . . . The human race must learn to forgive, to practice forgiveness, to choose it, to seek it, to value it, and to want it. That means each of us individually must do the same, because the whole world begins in the human heart."
From film to print
Kenneth Briggs' "The Power of Forgiveness" is based on a film by Martin Doblmeier and delves into the topic by looking at specific instances of forgiveness and analyzing them, then going several steps deeper.
The most recent, the murder spree that left five Amish schoolchildren dead and five wounded in a Pennsylvania classroom, is the opening to view forgiveness from the religious perspective. The most interesting portion of this was Briggs' parsing of the idea that the Amish' forgiveness of the madman murderer was "a spiritual reflex," something the Amish learn "by watching parents and neighbors forgive and by looking at the example of Jesus."
Several of the world's religions get a similar analysis.
A section on the sociological perspective wonders if those who forgive may be healthier than those who don't. Another chapter discusses how very difficult -- even impossible -- forgiveness can seem. There's brief mention of the death penalty debate and the film "Dead Man Walking," plus the complex grief of a mother of a New York City firefighter who died on 9/11, and even a few paragraphs that touch upon the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
The most interesting quote from that latter part?
"Somehow a refusal to pardon guilty priests provides a balance to years of having forgiven them too much. . . . For most lawyers fighting for huge cash settlements, forgiveness is unthinkable, even laughable."
There's much more, but let me recommend this book by quoting from one quoted in it, author and lecturer Marianne Williamson:
"At a time when we see so much evil, we are called upon . . . to stand for the possibility of human redemption that turns even the hardest of hearts." -- bz
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