What happens when a social activist with a knack for literature spends four years writing a semi-autobiographical novel of her native India?

Usually, not much. Unless the author happens to be Arundhati Roy. In 1997, she released The God of Small Things, a coming-of-age story about a pair of twins in backwoods India. Although it was a debut novel by someone with little-to-no literary pedigree, it won the Booker Prize, England's highest award for fiction, and induced a frenzy of lettered hype around the world.

It deserved the accolades. The novel is pure quality.

Ms. Roy masterfully weaves post-modern attention to insignificant details through a entrancing and real narrative about the loss of innocence. Bouncing about time and space, the narrative skips between India, Oxford, and New York, 1969 and 1993. Fraternal twins Estha and Rahel find themselves in the middle of something they cannot understand, in a family that somehow seems to function despite a wealth of dysfunctional characters. Lust, death, racial prejudice, culture conflict and childhood unreality make it a page-turner you don't have to feel guilty about. There is a subtle beauty in the prose which is not fully realized until some time later.

But it is the language that Roy uses which makes the book so special. She invents an idiom seemingly out of thin air that is unique to the work. It isn't just the mixing of English and the local Malayalam tongue which makes it so very exceptional. It's the way she manipulates the languages to create an atmosphere of surrealism. "Lush" is the closest I can come to describing it. It feels as if Ms. Roy spent years constructing each stunning sentence, although it is by no means a dense text. You'll have the read the book to really understand. It is worth it.

The only question left is why did she only write one? Did the muse evaporate? Was it a case of burn-out? Or did she simply feel that the one organic novel was sufficient?

After the book appeared, she returned to her original job promoting social justice, using her new celebrity to bring attention to causes which affect India's poor and working classes. It's been all nonfiction and politics for Roy, who is a vehement critic of globalization, American imperialism, and the nuclear policies of the Indian government. Imagine if Dave Eggers quit writing to picket outside Starbucks. An extremely noble choice, but a massive loss for the literary community.

Maybe it is better this way. No sophomore slump to disappoint us, no sequel to let us down. Nothing to sully or distract from the near-perfection of Small Things.

We'll never know anyway.

Or will we?

So maybe by now you have guessed the reason for this review, more than 10 years after the original publication of The God of Small Things. In 2007, Roy announced she would begin work on a second novel.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/an-activist-returns-to-the-novel/2007/03/08/1173166881043.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

There is no release date set, but let us hope that it doesn't take quite four years. Although, it might take that long to requite the excellence of The God of Small Things.

It will be hard to best the first effort. But if there is any justice in literature, we'll soon have another classic from this once-in-a-generation talent.

The God of Small Things at Powell's Books

I was wrong.

Zadie Smith's debut novel is a hilarious, sophisticated, and poignant look at race, religion, and culture in late 20th century London. The novel is divided into four parts, and each part focuses on one of three families: the Joneses, the Iqbals, and the Chalfens. The story begins with Archie Jones, an out-of-luck recent divorcee who, after a failed suicide attempt, meets Clara Bowden at a New Years party in 1975. Clara has just escaped from her dominating Jehovah's Witness mother Hortense, who had just converted Clara's love interest Ryan Topps and thereby interrupting any possible romance. Despite their differences (he's middle-aged and white; she's Caribbean and 19), Archie and Clara are married six weeks later. They produce a daughter named Irie around the same time Archie's best friend Salmad has twin sons.

Salmad Iqbal, a Bangladeshi, met Archie while they were both fighting in World War II. Part 2 gives more insight into Salmad, particularly his struggles with Western society. He is torn between his deep Muslim faith and his growing attraction to his twin sons Magid and Millat's music teacher, Poppy Burt-Jones. Poppy is all-too-eager at learning more about Salmad's culture; she even believes him when he makes up fictional holidays just to impress her. As their attraction heats up, Salmad is ridden with guilt. As an act of repentance, he decides to kidnap Magid and send him to Bangladesh, away from any "corrupt" Western influence. Things don't go as well as planned, however; Magid is more influenced by Western secular humanism than Islam.

The highly intellectual Chalfens enter the picture when Irie and Millat are both in their teens. Marcus Chalfen is a well-respected scientist, and his wife Joyce is a writer of gardening books. Despite the fact that Joyce often unknowingly blurts out racist remarks (she asks Millat's cousin Neena if it's difficult for Muslim women to bake while wearing "those long black sheets"), the Chalfen home provides a haven for Irie and Millat, who are both struggling to find their places in the world. Millat is caught between the world of partying and a radical Islamic group called KEVIN, while Irie is terribly self-conscious and harbors a secret crush on Millat. This catering to Irie and Millat causes Josh Chalfen to feel he's being replaced, and rebels by joining a group of animal rights extremists. Tensions rise even further between the Chalfens, Joneses, and Iqbals with Marcus' controversial FutureMouse project, a genetic experimentation on a mouse...with Magid assisting Marcus.

There are two main obstacles the characters struggle with, and the first is a sense of identity. In a multi-racial melting pot London, everyone goes to great lengths to find their own unique sense of self. Clara loses both her Jamaican accent and her belief in God as a way to distance herself from her mother. Salmad's fear of Western society's negative influence makes him put all his hope in his eldest son (by two minutes) to carry on traditional family values. Millat and Josh get caught up in radical ideologies to rebel against their fathers. The second obstacle the characters struggle with is the past. Either they're running from it (Irie's great-grandfather was a white English captain who abandoned Hortense's mother), or clinging onto to it (Salmad claims that his great-grandfather, Mangal Pande, was a hero in spite of historians' objections). The only character that is not bogged down by the past is Archie, until the very end when it comes back to slap him in the face.

When White Teeth was first published in 2000, critics were amazed that Smith was only 25 at the time. There's a tremendous amount of maturity in Smith's writing style, way beyond her years. Her prose is clear, detailed, and flows naturally. The characters are well-developed and sympathetic. Also, Smith has a wonderful sense of humor; try not to laugh at her dead-on observations. If there are any flaws, there are minor things, like a piece of dialogue that's out of place in a scene or two. But these are small things that writers get better at over time.

Hype can be a dangerous thing. The more something is built up, the more disappointing it is when it doesn't measure up to one's expectations. But White Teeth lives up to the hype, and introduces Zadie Smith as one of the best new contemporary writers.

But once you've come to grips with your HIV status, you might as well use it to your advantage. Get the Make-A-Wish Foundation to find a way for you to meet your favorite band of all time, Depeche Mode. Yes, this is the 1980s, when synth rock and the AIDS crisis were making headlines.

My Pet Virus is the literary equivalent of watching the dramedy Scrubs. It is the ironically funny coming-of-age story of a boy who might not have come to age, no thanks to his pet virus. "I can be laid-back about my lot in life because I now realize that I was destined for a life of medical drama from day one. I was born in the month of July, and my horoscope sign is a disease (Cancer). The symbol for Cancer? A crab (the sexually transmitted critter). Not only that, my parents named me Shawn Timothy Decker, which makes my initials S.T.D."

Decker was born with "the royal disease," hemophilia. His parents went into an overprotective tizzy that stops just short of making him the next Bubble Boy. Yet, time and time again, Decker wound up sick in the hospital. In the eighties, blood donations weren't properly screened and Decker contracted hepatitis B, "the first in a long line of infectious diseases I would go on to collect--instead of stamps or coins like other kids." Eventually, he also contracts HIV through tainted blood.

"I hope Shawn dies," says Kip, Shawn's older brother by two years, who was six at the time. When pressed by his mother on why he would say such a terrible thing, he utters the words that dramatically changed his parents' outlook: "Shawn doesn't have a life. You and Dad don't let him do anything. He'd have more fun in Heaven." Considering Kip's logic, Shawn's mother says, "If God lets Shawn live ... then I'll let him live, too."

And live he does. With sagacious wit, Decker goes on to tell the story of his first thirty years. From his obsession with pro-wrestling's Ric Flair to forming a band, he reminisces over his boyhood. Then his discovery of girls. Decker's love story is unique, though. He candidly tells of how as a teenager he called the National AIDS Hotline to find out if he was putting his girlfriend at risk by having oral sex with her. (The answer: Yes.) Then, how his mom had to intervene because she knew he couldn't tell his girlfriend he has HIV. Eventually, though, Decker finds love and marries a "negatoid," an HIV-negative beauty-pageant contestant. Together, they help raise awareness about HIV.

While My Pet Virus explores the physical, social, and emotional struggles of living with HIV, the memoir is applicable to everyone. It is about finding humor in the midst of strife and living life to the fullest. While one could easily veer into self-promoting or cheesy territory with such inspiration, Decker's heavy doses of sarcasm and poking fun of himself keep the book fresh.

The book is also about relationships in all its forms. Decker tells how his illness almost tore his parents apart, yet how his family's love for him kept him alive. Over the years, his myriad of friends have included the Crompton Road Crew (classmates he stole girly mags with) and gay men with HIV he met on the Internet. And, of course, there is the romance and love with his girlfriends and wife. He also discusses the sometimes-tenuous relationship between hemophiliacs and homosexuals with AIDS.

Only briefly does Decker touch on any sort of relationship with God. Decker mentions how some Christians ostracized him because of his HIV status. However, when he and his wife were married, the ceremony was performed by a friend who works at the AIDS Service Organization and who "had been a Southern Baptist minister, a reminder that religion and compassion for people with AIDS can go hand in hand." He also opens the book with the Depeche Mode lyrics, "I don't want to start/ any blasphemous rumours/ but I think that God's/ got a sick sense of humour/and when I die/ I expect to find Him laughing."

My Pet Virus was published by Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin in 2006. Shawn Decker also has a blog at http://mypetvirus.com/.

Sunday, May 18, is AIDS Walk New York. Decker and his wife, Gwen Barringer, are currently trying to raise more money than Kenneth Cole for charity. The above-mentioned website has a link for you to donate to their fundraising efforts for the walk.

After reading My Pet Virus, I will be participating in AIDS Walk New York for the first time so you can also donate through my page: http://aidswalknewyork2008.kintera.org/snikolop

Pollan boils down his entire food philosophy to seven simple words that also serve as the book's subtitle: Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much. Most of us want to be more careful and conscientious about the food we eat, but convenience and cost often hamper our best intentions. Pollan's easy to remember and practical catch phrase makes it easier to balance those two interests.

Pollan's first directive, "eat food," seems simple enough, but, in practice, eating real, whole foods is increasingly difficult to do in today's marketplace. The industrialization and mass fertilization of our produce has dramatically decreased the nutritional content of the fruits and vegetables available at the supermarkets. Much of what is consumed in America on a daily basis is the product of industrial farms or a laboratory, both of which sacrifice good taste and nutrition for low prices.

For most Americans, Pollan's suggestion to consume mostly plants is almost un-American. We like our meat, and we don't particularly care how it gets to our plates. Pollan cites decades-old research from Weston A. Price, as well as more recent research presented in Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II's The China Study to demonstrate the dangers of the animal-protein-rich American diet. Factory farms are one of the leading causes of air and water pollution, so, for those of us concerned about creation care, eating a diet consisting primarily of plants should be a way of life. At the very least, we should be making more conscientious food choices about where the animal products that we consume come from.

Pollan's last recommendation, don't eat too much, is a common-sense approach to any healthy diet. Pollan argues that we need to change how we eat by changing our food culture to one that focuses more on quality than quantity and more on enjoyment of the food and the experience than on cost. Pollan offers the French as a model of a right-minded food culture: the French "seldom snack, and eat most of their food at meals shared with other people...they eat small portions and don't come back for seconds...and they spend considerably more time eating than we do."

Our personal food choices are a huge part of our social experience - both as individuals and as a community. Our prevalent food culture today is shallow and exploitative, and it is time that we, as consumers, become more engaged in what exactly ends up on our dinner plates and how it got there. Reading In Defense of Food would be a good first-step toward that end.

The success or failure of implementing bureaucracy is wholly reliant upon two things: A definitive, just power source, and clear communication amongst divisions. Bureaucracy is, in theory, the most efficient way to divide power only if there is a power regulating the bureaucracy itself; a bureaucracy which stands alone has no source from which to divide power, in turn ensuring its own downfall. The famed Marxist utopian experiments in the Twentieth Century failed when movements to decentralize power became subject to totalitarian dictatorships, ultimately bringing about genocide and war in their desperate attempts to ensure societal and economic uniformity. The USSR, China, and others each were devoted the cause of power divided equally amongst all citizens. Therein lies the problem. Power is not meant to be overspecialized to the point of individual autonomy. Rather, each individual is given rights and protected by the jurisdiction of power. Famed sociologist Max Weber noted that bureaucracy has an "impersonality, concentration of the means of administration, a leveling effect on social and economic differences and implementation of a system of authority that is practically indestructible." Each of these characteristics makes bureaucracy an ideal candidate for manipulation; it is through this means to an end society would become that much more vulnerable to malevolent forces and hideous strengths.

The lack of clarification within the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) is addressed by C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength through the lens of obsessive insider Mark Studdock. Studdock is able to maneuver himself into good standing with progressively more and more exclusive circles. Amongst inner circles at Belbury he finds that there is a great deal of backstabbing and finger-pointing, and, much to his chagrin, that no one has the faintest idea of their ultimate purpose as exclusive members of the N.I.C.E. When he finally enters into the innermost circle of Belbury--those purported to have been directing the affairs of the organization--he finds that even fewer of the elites know of their true purpose. The air of paranoid oversight ensnares followers and keeps them under the control of the organization, showing the N.I.C.E.'s sly utilization of organizational mayhem and groupthink.

Worse yet, he finds that they are deluded into thinking that their specific function is driving the Institution. Filostrato, for instance, is fueled by the belief that humanity can transcend biological constraints by scientific means: Straik is convinced through his set of heretical religious views that any form of power is an embodiment of God's will: Even the actual Director of the N.I.C.E., Jules, is, through his scant knowledge of science, completely unknowing of the real purpose of the N.I.C.E. He is merely a figurehead. Only Wither and Frost are informed enough to know the N.I.C.E.'s purpose as direct servants of the Macrobes (fallen eldila). Being informed, however, comes at a rather hefty price: Both Wither and Frost are so sickeningly deluded by the Macrobes that they are absolutely devoid of soul or interior. Wither is oftentimes described as having momentary bouts of a lack of expression, which could be interpreted as an outward sign of his lack of a soul.

Still, there is no central power. Wither answers to the real Head (literally and figuratively), the severed head of Alcasan, which is the host to a fallen eldila. The Macrobes are the very essence of opposition to authority through their rebellion against Maleldil the Young, yet the reader is given no insight as to whether there is a 'bent' Oyarsa overseeing the process. Even if it is present, one cannot assume that the fallen eldila are willing to abide by any sort of authority whatsoever, as presumably autonomous Satanic agents. The bent Oyarsa could have presented itself to the innermost circle just as the good Oyarsa's were able to visit Ransom and Merlin at St. Anne's. Therefore the reader can deduce that the bent eldila, the embodiment of heavenly rebellion, are autonomous.

In Satire VI, Roman poet Juvenal raises a question which eerily haunts us today:

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

(But who will watch the watchmen?)

How could any plot without a concrete leader - in this case, the Watchman of watchmen, Maleldil - succeed? The Macrobes can manipulate the Earth's laws, its people, and bend it in the wrong direction, but they are utterly powerless in the face of Maleldil the Young. The sheer fact that animals could overcome an organization bent on eliminating humanity shows the readers that there had to have been a serious flaw.
N.I.C.E.'s weakness was its lack of power structure. The purported plot to completely abolish true mankind had to remain completely clandestine in order to appeal to the competing interests of the selfish workers of N.I.C.E. Only through manipulating flaws inherent in organizational power structures and through delusion were the Macrobes able to gain significant enough momentum to put the world under their sway.

Upon arrival in the present time, Merlinus expresses his dismay over the lack of a leader "whose office it is to put down tyrants and give life to dying kingdoms." Ransom, however, is able to reestablish this role as Director when he, through the careful operations of the Logres, put down the tyrannical N.I.C.E. The power structure of the Logres is rather clear: It is led by the Pendragon, who has been appointed by Maleldil as the successor to previous Pendragons, the first of which was Arthur. Here we have an explicitly clear case for centralized power, in that the rightful leader is approved by Maleldil. As for the division of power, there is an indirect division of power through labor and the inhabitants' various spiritual gifts; even Ivy Maggs holds a unique role at St. Anne's as the caretaker of Mr. Bultitude and the animals. This power structure is actually more efficient in practice than that of any bureaucratic regime.

The very same ethical problem seen in the N.I.C.E.'s Macrobial motivations arises in the award-winning graphic novel The Watchmen, an expose on the alleged corruption of famous Superheroes. Adrian Veidt, better known as Ozymandias, who is purported to be the "smartest man in the world" and the most successful of the former superheroes in the aftermath of the Keene Act of 1977, deliberately opens Pandora's box through an elaborate scheme involving an alien invasion with the intent to unite the entire world against a common, absolute enemy. In doing this, he uses murder to achieve his means to an end, sacrificing half of New York City's population in the process. His vision of reality and his self absorption with his hierarchical understanding of humanity (under the guise of Eastern Mysticism) has been so distorted that he believes he is doing the world a service; no one deliberately takes the lives of the multitude for more lives to be saved. One should start by saving as many lives as possible in the first place.

The smartest man on the planet became so idealistic that he had to create evil to unite humanity to destroy it. Filostrato believed that the world had to be wiped clean in order to fulfill the biological imperative. Both tried to make the same dream a reality, and both saw their plans infiltrated.

Even so, the N.I.C.E. ended the very way it began: In confusion and chaos. Those who worked at Belbury were following a lie that conformed to their interests and obsessions as the chameleon changes color in his environment, and manipulated situations to their own advantage, only to be caught up in a complicated web of blaming and pointing fingers. Luckily for humanity, there is something so much more powerful than the red tape and naivety of such a power structure: The absolute power of God.

Sitting alone in the rain, "the holocaust complete," the weight of revelation poured down upon Nick Carraway's shoulders. Nobody came. Gatsby's final party lacked a roaringly big band, flappers and bobs, high balls and Hollywood stars. Yet it was the first of his parties that entertained reality for the man who couldn't escape his past, regardless of how hard he worked to create a new future. Sitting alone in the rain, Nick was the last uninvited guest to the last part ever held in honor of the Great Jay Gatsby.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his finest work, one of the great works of the 20th century, with a redemptive understanding of human nature, distinct personality types, and a refined understanding of what was, and what sadly still is, the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is more than just an accurate portrayal of the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age. It is the story of three people, mysteriously brought together, enveloped in events fated to end in only one conceivable way: tragedy.

And it is with the death of the Great Gatsby that our narrator, Nick Carraway, the moral compass of the novel, the only character who changes, understands what we as Americans need to amend today--the American Dream, to a dream centered on community and relationships above personal success and individual fulfillment surrounded by a white picket fence.

Till the very end, Gatsby, originally James Gatz, is an equivocal enigma. The majority of my annotations were questions regarding his moral character. Was he a man who had risen in the land of opportunity, or was he merely a shady bootlegger? Fitzgerald must have known Jay Gatsby, must have sat down several times to drinks, attended his parties. For Gatsby may be the most life-like of the many heroes found in American Literature. We close the final pages knowing Gatsby better than Ishmael; Huck is a child we knew at one time, but who no longer lives in our world today; Holden is too young to fall and fail in the way Gatsby eventually does. No, it is in Gatsby we most clearly see ourselves, most lucidly see our material dreams realized, and most painfully feel the bludgeoning of the unrequited love with the girl of our dreams.

Daisy Buchanan, in contrast, isn't real, much like the allusion that personal fulfillment will truly be fulfilling. In Daisy, Gatsby chases a ghost, an apparition of what once was and what never could be again. If Fitzgerald knew anything, he knew first-hand the mirage of wealth and personal success outside of a real community. And it is for this reason that The Great Gatsby is as timely and tangible of a read today as it was in the 20s.

With the elections quickly approaching and candidates promising change, it is in the silencing death of Gatsby's unspoken, unreachable dream that we see the need for a new national dream. We see the need for true friendship. We see the need to come together not as suits and gowns, titles and wealth, but as people of a common origin, as people in need of each other.

In the end, sitting on the front steps of West Egg's finest estate, puddles catching the drops falling fittingly upon an hour needing cleansing and renewal, Nick waits for the cars to once again line the drive, for the crowds of people who eagerly attended each and every of Gatsby's parties. Nobody came.

Fitzgerald leaves us silenced, sinking despondently low in whatever furniture holds us at the moment; yet Fitzgerald's last act is something that will cause us to rise: closing the back page upon a novel that changes its readers, we are left with a vision. It is a vision where we clearly see the need to amend our American Dream; one where we look past the superficial linings, unreservedly embrace community, and finally become One People, One Nation, with One Dream. I can already see the cars lining the drive.

The Greatness of Gatsby is that he is real. He is in us all. Yet our hope rests in that Nick is real as well. And Nick Carraway even outlived the Great Jay Gatsby.

Monda is also deeply religious (he categorizes himself as "Catholic, Apostolic, Roman"), and, in Do You Believe?, he puts his superior connections to good use. Monda convinced 18 preeminent cultural figures to have public conversations about God and religion. He explains in the introduction: "I asked the people I interviewed to tell me honestly if they think that God exists, and how their answer to this question has affected their choices in life." Do You Believe?, Monda writes, is "an attempt to reclaim religion's central place in existence, with a consistent emphasis on how every choice has its origins in the answer to the great question."

Monda sat down with an impressive array of artists, mostly writers - including Paul Auster, Grace Paley, Michael Cunningham, Derek Walcott, Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie, and Richard Ford - as well as filmmakers Spike Lee, David Lynch, and Martin Scorsese, actress Jane Fonda, architect Daniel Libeskind, and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. These interviews are a pleasure to read. The subjects reflect on their religious upbringings. Several are able to identify specific moments when they ceased to believe in God, or when they realized that they had never believed. They all speak frankly and eloquently about their faith (or lack of it).

For example, Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate, prefers to speak not of "God" as such, but of "an intelligence interested in what exists and respectful of what is created." The greater our knowledge, she says, the greater God becomes. Organized religion, in contrast, "ends by defining and reducing [God]...Even the Bible, this marvelous book written by extraordinary visionaries, is small and reductive with respect to the greatness of God."

Saul Bellow, another Nobel prize-winning novelist, responded to the question "Do you believe in God?" with a simple "Yes." When asked how he imagines God, Bellow declined to answer. "I don't want to talk about that," he explained. "I'm afraid of banality, and I think it's a subject whose importance is diminished by conversation."

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and author of "Night" - and also, come to think of it, a Nobel prize-winner (for Peace, in 1986) - is especially moving when he speaks of his "wounded faith." "Hasidism teaches that no heart is as whole as a broken heart, and I would say that no faith is as solid as a wounded faith."

Monda: How do you conceive existence without faith?

Wiesel: The world has had obvious recent experience of it. The horrors of the century just ended were perpetrated by the godless dictatorship of Nazism and the atheist dictatorship of Communism. This obviously doesn't mean that monstrosities haven't been committed in the name of God; the list of believers who are stained with infamy is long. Yet the programmatic absence of a God, or at least the illusion of opposing his presence, leads systematically to horror.

Monda: You believe firmly in God, but you live in a world where suffering, injustice, and tyrrany exist.

Wiesel: It's the great torment of my entire existence. The question I don't know how to answer and that I don't think anyone can answer. But even in these terrible moments I see not an absence but, rather, an eclipse.

Nearly all of the subjects talk of the dangers of religious fundamentalism and the way the name of God is appropriated to justify violence - timely topics since all these interviews were conducted between 2002, when smoke was still rising from the rubble at Ground Zero, and 2005, as George W. Bush's "crusade" in the Middle East was deteriorating rapidly. The novelist Nathan Englander compares fundamentalism to alcoholism: "a dangerous excess." Wiesel says, "If it weren't such a tragic subject, one might ask jokingly every time for a notarized statement certifying that the war about to be unleashed has been willed expressly by the Omnipotent."

Morrison is more direct:

I think what [politicians] are doing is simply exploitative, if not blasphemous. The situation this president has got us into is desperate, and I'm terrified when I hear him speak of his God. Phrases are attributed to him like "I will never negotiate with myself," but negotiating with oneself is what is normally called thinking. His religious absolutism is stupefying.

Monda asks several recurring questions, which might be compiled and disseminated like Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire.

1. Do you believe in God?
2. What is the image you have of God?
3. Were you brought up in a religious environment?
4. Then what happened?
5. What do you think there is after life?
6. What artists do you admire in whom you feel a strong religious presence?
7. What is your opinion of Dostoevsky's assertion "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted?"
8. How do you see a believer? Someone deluded? Ingenuous? A person blessed by grace?

Michael Cunningham had the funniest answer to the last question. He said, "I think that anyone who believes in anything other than shopping is a hero."

The Monda Questionnaire is good for more than just a random MySpace survey. I grew up in the church; I believe today in a good and personal God. And yet, reading through this book, I found myself struggling to put into words my own answers to these, the "simple but fundamental" questions of life. Do You Believe? is an illuminating and provocative book capable of inspiring conversations both internal and external.

This review first appeared, in slightly different form, on the author's blog.

Subtitled "The Spiritual Memoir of a 21st Century Christian," Sara Miles story is nothing less than radical. A self-proclaimed "secular intellectual, lesbian, left-wing journalist with a habit of skepticism," Miles wandered into a church, took communion, and her life changed. "I became a Christian, claiming a faith that many of my fellow believers want to exclude me from; following a God my unbelieving friends see as archaic superstition." Miles later started a food pantry at her church and helped organize food pantries all over San Francisco. Hers is a story of unconventional faith with works to boot.

Miles journey of food and faith begins in childhood. Raised by atheist parents (who were children of missionaries), Miles worked as a restaurant cook, a journalist covering the wars in 1980s Central America, then settled in San Francisco with her partner and daughter. While Miles admired the radical priests she met in Central America, she felt religion was a gene she didn't possess. Until that afternoon she wandered into a church and took her first communion. Not surprisingly, it was in the act of "eating Jesus," that she awakened to a spiritual hunger that had lurked under the surface all along.

But Miles' new faith brought as many questions as it did answers. She feared rejection from family and friends, not to mention conservative Christians. She faced the foibles of those in her community as well as her own. But her hunger for God propels her forward, to pray, to change, and to take action.

Miles account of running a food pantry may seem anticlimactic to her years as a journalist in war-torn Central America. But there's more to pantries than food. Miles writes about the conflicts of running such a ministry: homeless drug addicts, pushy immigrants, the ravished by poverty and abuse, uppity parishioners who'd rather listen to Bach than feed a bum. Miles cops to her own self-righteousness and impatience and lauds the unexpected generosity of skeptics and strangers. God is in the details, and it is in these smaller stories where Miles' journey is most moving. Miles sees the face of Jesus in the messy, the outcast and in feeding the "least of these."

Miles does touch on how her faith and vocation affects her home life, but she keeps her personal life private. Rather, Miles deals with larger questions such as those she poses in her forward: "Why would any thinking person become a Christian? How can anyone reconcile the hateful politics of much contemporary Christianity with Jesus' imperative to love? What are the deepest ideas of this contested religion, and what do they mean in real life?"

Miles is a pleasure to read. She is neither lurid nor sentimental, yet she can devote pages to describing a New York City restaurant kitchen; the line of people outside the food pantry; or dealing with a homeless person while on the phone teaching a skeptic to pray. If you're looking for a morph from radical lesbian to Republican housefrau, this book is not for you. If your heart is for the outcast, if you want to challenge your beliefs, if you want to be moved from ideas into action, I heartily recommend Take This Bread.

Read her foreword here.

Please also check out my "An Interview with Sara Miles."

All excerpts from "TAKE THIS BREAD" by Sara Miles. Copyright © 2007 by Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Random House, Inc."

Palmer wrote this book for the vocationally lost, so he is remarkably gentle. But he also does not hide how difficult the process of finding one's way can be. The first chapter describes the connection between turmoil and self-knowledge: "How much dissolving and shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep identity--the true self within every human being that is the seed of authentic vocation."

Palmer is completely sold on the wisdom of knowing oneself first and then using this knowledge to connect with the outside world, and those who think introspection is an indulgence will judge Palmer's approach. Palmer anticipates this criticism and writes, "The attempt to live by the reality of our own nature, which means our limits as well as our potentials, is a profoundly moral regimen."

The book has a chapter on depression. With elegance and dignity, Palmer gives personal details about his own struggles. He offers empathy to other depression sufferers while suggesting how those dealing with situational depression might help themselves move away from their depression. As someone who has experienced prolonged depression, I found his tone pitch-perfect.

Let Your Life Speak is easily absorbed because the book is written with humility and compassion. My only criticism is that the chapters are not strongly connected to each other; the material in the book was originally a sequence of unrelated lectures or essays, and the stand-alone nature of the chapters is still detectable. But this is a small problem. Much more important is that Parker Palmer has written a book for people who are living with the pain of not yet knowing their full place in the world.

The novel begins in flashback, with the mother, Orleanna Price's foreshadowing thoughts as she tries to reconcile the past by piecing it together in the present. The family moves into a distant and small African village situated near the border between the modern day Congo and Zaire. The novel, divided into seven sections all named after books from the Bible and the Apocrypha, travels from view-point to view-point, each chapter written by a different female of the family. The father of the family, Nathan Price, and the other characters in the African village and beyond are all seen through the lens of these young Georgia girls and their mother as they grow and change in the African landscape. Kingsolver's description of the emotional upheaval in the family is coupled with extensive insight into the flora and fauna of Africa. The physical becomes a canvas for communicating emotions suppressed by the family patriarch and their own cultural norms suppressed by their new environment.

The rise of war and the power struggle between the white man and the African is depicted on small and large scale. Nathan Price, an extremely controlling man, practically occupies his family, imposing on them his ideas about life. Eventually he becomes so overwhelmingly unreasonable and crazy that his family, forced to wake up from their nightmarish life in order to survive in Africa, must leave him. Each female finds her own way to cope with the baggage they carry. Africa, also occupied by the white man, realizes its inner turmoil will only resolve under the emergence of freedom. The end result for both family and country is a constant struggle to overcome their past while still fighting for a future.

In the middle of all the chaos, Kingsolver ties these revelations back to the Bible with her liberal use of biblical imagery. The Price family, sent as missionaries who are eventually cut off from their source, are constantly questioning a God that becomes culturally charged against the backdrop of unfamiliar territory. The encircling perspectives each girl forms travels round and round as their American mannerisms slowly fade into the reality of the surroundings in which they live. None of the family females stay in the small African village in which they began, but Africa remains inside each of them; the answers they once had are replaced now only with questions and doubts.

The title The Poisonwood Bible references Nathan Price's constant mispronunciation of the word Bängala. His frequent use of the phrase "Tata Jesus is Bängala," or poisonwood, is juxtaposed with its intended "Tata Jesus is Bangala"--precious or dear one. Is Kingsolver's title revealing an underlying criticism of Christianity? One idea she does present is a new definition or view of the Bible; her novel itself becomes a sort of Bible of memoirs for the family, each person interpreting life in their own way. Kingsolver confirms reality to be the bible to which she ascribes, since real life is preferred to the twisted translations of the actual Bible.

Kingsolver's seemingly subtle commentary on Christianity is heavily embedded in all the themes of the novel. The plot holds five females in the forefront, all naively captivated by their Christian heritage, but then twists into an all around rejection of their faiths. The white man, the guardian of this westernized religion shows himself to be overly possessive and controlling for psychological reasons of his own, which explain, but by no means excuse, his actions. When country and family eventually reclaim control over their own lives, they both reject the white man and his religion since it was the premise for the occupation from the beginning. In many ways Kingsolver's novel seems to be a response to the famous Rudyard Kipling poem, "The White Man's Burden," as the work describes imperialism at its supposedly finest hour.

Are we then to conclude, due to Kingsolver's very real and expressive critique, that Christianity is only a white man's excuse for the power and occupation of an allegedly weaker vessel? No, I think a more annotated approach to Kingsolver's interpretation exposes a different conclusion. Kingsolver's presentation of Christianity as a mere cultural and heritaged idea with little substance except tradition would lead anyone to reject such tomfoolery. Her definition of Christianity discloses itself to be solely a cultural one that brings only oppression and destruction, itself becoming mere crazy-talk. This characterization of Christianity omits its true underlying message, replacing it with the failures and lies found in one human society. This Christianity holds not the redemption, truth and grace that true Christianity does. In a world where even supposed Christians are rejecting traditional westernized Christianity, calling themselves "Followers of Christ" and the like to differentiate, Kingsolver's critique is well-timed. Her gentle reminder exhibits only the cultural icon of Jesus in his westernized get-up called tradition, someone we can call Bängala or poisonwood, not the true redemptive Jesus who is in reality Bangala, precious and dear.

It won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, no mean task in itself, and that award was just the crowning achievement on top of many other accomplishments. The book was short-listed for the National Book Critics' Circle Award, many critics lauded the work as McCarthy's masterpiece, and both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times put The Road on their list of best novels for the year. In the mildly self-satiric Tournament of Books, a literary variant of March Madness, The Road knocked off all the other books to emerge as the champion. And critically last but certainly not economically least, Oprah's Book Club chose The Road as its recent selection, which gave the book a larger platform than many of McCarthy's other awards combined.

The book's wild success was unpredicted by book sales analysts, however, because of its dark subject matter. Not many post-apocalyptic stories are happy-go-lucky romps in the park, but then again, not many of them maintain such an unremittingly bleak view of the world that suicide seems like a good choice. McCarthy paints the world after a nuclear holocaust, where all the colors have run down into a uniform gray and where cannibalism is the order of the day. Nothing grows and few beings survive in this "cauterized terrain." A father and a son are fighting for food and shelter, battling nomadic raiders who try to imprison and eat them, and hiking thousands of miles through the wasteland of the earth, under the ever-ashen sky. Before the father and son's exodus began, we learn the mother used obsidian shards to slit her wrists.

This is not exactly endearing material to housewives in the Midwest.

The book shouldn't repulse Christians, however. Not that it shouldn't be repulsive in parts--because clearly the subject matter is not designed for children's bedtime reading--but we should not avoid reading the book simply because of its dark subject matter. Although the content is not good fodder for imitation, it's not content that determines the meaning and messages embedded in stories, but rather the interpretation of the elements inside the narrative--which acts are condemned by the story and which ones vindicated, which characters are punished for their deeds and which ones are rewarded. When judged in that light, The Road has much to recommend it. In fact, The Road, while not an explicitly a religious book, certainly aligns with religious belief.

First, consider the character of the son. In an otherwise ill-lit landscape, he is a beacon of hope and generosity. Though he and his father are starving, the son pleads with his father to offer a blind beggar some of their food. When they see a mangy dog, the son wants to take pity on it, and after seeing a little boy scampering about the rubble, he wants to take the boy under their wings for protection. The son's default mode of operation is one of sympathy and grace. This is in sharp contrast to the father, who operates on the principle of pragmatics: he will do whatever it takes to survive. When they find a man wandering along the road, his eye fused shut after being struck by lightening, the son wants to offer him food but the father refuses: "He's going to die. We cant share what we have or we'll die too." (And the lack of an apostrophe is not a mistake--much of the punctuation has been stripped from the text, especially for conjunctions, so the barrenness of the prose matches the barrenness of the world.) The father's only sympathy is directed towards the son, but the son's persistent example of unconditional love eventually wins over the father.

Also, by not naming the son, McCarthy manages to endow him with a mythic resonance, one that transcends mere individuality and rises to a symbol, or, perhaps, an allusion. On page two of the novel, the father links his son with the divine Son: "If he is not the word of God God never spoke." The explicit references of the father to what the child represents dovetail nicely with the son's actions of self-sacrificial love. Also, the allusions to the Word become flesh, as well as the spiritual echoes of the familial Son-Father construction, continue throughout the book. In fact, several reviewers have noted that the son is suspiciously Christ-like.

The book also emphasizes the evil embedded within humanity. One of the best defenses I have ever heard of the depravity of man was in an interview in the pages of a national magazine. The interviewer said he didn't believe in depravity, because when he looked around he saw so many decent individuals, and the interviewee replied, "Haven't you read Lord of the Flies?" It was a brilliant comeback, because while William Golding might not have ever uttered the word "depravity" in the novel, the characters he described in those pages are utterly convincing arguments for mankind's innate tendencies toward evil. And while depravity can be rationally and logically argued until every syllogism is exhausted, nothing is quite as convincing as a story where men and women act as though truly wicked. In that quote above, The Road could easily be substituted for Lord of the Flies. The Road shows the suicidal and cannibalistic depths to which humanity can sink. Solipsism is everyone's watchword. For most, survivalist notions that are inherently selfish are the only guiding principles of life. The son constantly inquires about "the bad guys," and the father's answers seem to imply that no one escapes this designation.

Yet depravity without moral characters is gratuitous. There are certainly many books that show depravity without holding back, and many of them would not be categorized as positive. But by consistently showing the sacrificial love from the father to the son, and from the son to everyone in the world, McCarthy makes his characters a glowing orb in a world where the lights have gone out, and redeems an otherwise gloomy novel. He is not as interested in the gratuity of sin as much as he is interested in focusing on the marvel of unconditional love in this hideous landscape.

To return to the concept of the apocalypse genre, the benefit of this type of story is that people become needy when they imagine such devastation. People start to search when they read a book that eviscerates their hope. People seek out answers when they feel that their overly simplistic or naive constructions of the world are faulty mechanisms to deal with pain. A type of book like this acts to deconstruct people's flimsy (and ultimately hollow) explanations of meaning, purpose, and hope. Sure, he who has ears to hear will hear, but sometimes it helps to first have the earwax cleaned out by a penetrating work of art.

Given that The Road is coming at the same time as a spate of other apocalyptic novels, and only a few years after the hordes of books in the Left Behind series (the people most left behind were those trying to keep up with the sequels), it shows the massive interest people have in the end of the world. Perhaps people are just morbid and are titillated by thoughts of extinction, but the cultural fascination might also show a renewed interest in mortality, end points from which we cannot return, and a destruction of God-like proportions. This is a good thing; I'd much rather have people focus upon the end of the world than seducing the neighbor girl or trying to amass wealth. Apocalypse, in this case, could be a most healthy obsession.

We've all been there before, trying to assuage our feelings of guilt with justifications and avoiding eye contact. Tom did what many of us would have done. He kept walking. I can resonate with that; it's the "wise" thing to do. But then he did something different; he turned around.

"Living a faith that bleeds" is the tagline for this book about justice, hope, and change. It begins with a story about a man who saw his Savior on the street. Tom lives his life by the principle that Jesus is everywhere and often seen in the "least of these." When Tom went back, his faith started to bleed.

In the first few chapters, he discusses the essence of the Gospel, which is something to be lived and not just discussed, and the global problem of poverty. As "little Christs," we have a responsibility to do something about suffering in the world.

He goes on to discuss the AIDS crisis in Africa - particularly Swaziland, which has the highest rate of HIV in the world and will go extinct in 50 years if nothing changes - and his heart for the forgotten and forsaken.

The statistics do come, and he doesn't leave the reader with a lot of excuses for inaction. Producing change isn't hard; it just requires a willingness, he argues.

The latter chapters call the reader to action, but unlike many books of this tenor, they don't abandon you there. Tom gives you potential routes to pursue. He invites you to join his fivefor50 campaign, go on a mission trip, and raise money and awareness.

My only disappointment with Red Letters was that there were not more stories. My favorite chapter, "Snapshots of Hope," tells of African babies rescued from abandonment, Russian orphans turned into leaders, and how those who cared for them were radically changed.

Perhaps what I admired most about the book was the author's dedication to his own cause. Tom Davis isn't interested in selling books to just propagate more "corporate Christianity," he's really seeking to make an impact on the world, which is why a portion of the book sales go directly to feeding orphans. I can't help but respect that.

Red Letters isn't about social action. It's about Jesus - about finding him in the least-likely of places and our commitment to meet him there.

I've discovered a new way to live. Every morning when I get out of bed, I look for Jesus. No, not because I've misplaced Him. And I'm not talking about a feeling I get during prayer, or revelation that comes to me while reading Scripture. I'm talking about finding Jesus in the eyes of real people. In the eyes of the poor, the handicapped, the oppressed, the orphan, the homeless, the AIDS victim - the abandoned and the forgotten. (Tom Davis, Red Letters, p. 15.)