Novel pokes fun at church politics
Whoever said that university politics are vicious because the stakes are so low probably never served on a ministerial search committee.
Michelle Huneven’s delightful new novel “Search” reveals the inner workings of just such a committee. It takes the form of a comic memoir-with-recipes by a restaurant critic and food writer enlisted to help pick a senior minister of her progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California.
The opportunity arrives just when Dana Potowski is despairing of ever finding a subject for her next book. Then it occurs to her that the yearlong search is likely to yield enough material for her to add to the “recent flurry of books about intensive 12-month undertakings: a year of reading only the Bible; a year having sex every day.”
But is it ethical? She decides that by the time the book is ready to be published, no one will really care and besides, she will change names and identifying details. So begins her surreptitious note-taking as the committee begins its endless rounds of meetings and interviews with candidates across the country. The comic twist is that the shenanigans of some of the principals, both committee members and clergy, are as twisted and weird as what we’ve come to expect on Wall Street or in Washington — and the book becomes a best seller.
Fans of Huneven’s four previous novels will recognize familiar themes in “Search,” including alcoholism, recovery and the restorative power of gardening, cooking and a spiritual practice. That doesn’t keep her fictional alter ego from poking fun at the liberal pieties of the Unitarian denomination.
At times the novel — at
over 350 pages without the recipes — feels a bit baggy. But Huneven is such a smart and funny writer that readers are likely to give her a pass for choosing abundance over austerity. — Ann Levin, Associated Press
Although Sam and Elli Logan are identical twin sisters,
their personalities are drastically different. Sam loves the spotlight and has a knack for acting. Elli would rather blend into a crowd and just go to school like a normal kid. But with a secret signal, they switch places, embodying each other and escaping themselves, if only for a little while.
Janelle Brown’s fifth book, “I’ll Be You,” follows the twins from childhood, when they are scooped up as Hollywood child actor commodities and made into minor stars, to their 30s, when Sam is a barista with no acting future struggling to stay sober and Elli is a picture of modest success with a husband, a house and a small florist business.
Gone are the days when Sam and Elli would switch places. In fact, the two haven’t spoken in a year, since Sam last relapsed and finally crossed the line with Elli, leaving their
already frayed connection undeniably severed. But when Elli’s weekend retreat turns into a week and then longer — Sam knows something is wrong.
Generously sprinkled with witty word choice and tasty twists, “I’ll Be You” is a page-turner in spite of itself. The breaks are meant to add suspense but often fall short. Minor inconsistencies pop up — which, although not important enough to impact the plot, are enough to chip at the suspension of disbelief required for a tale as dramatic as “I’ll Be You.”
Brown’s intriguing characters and plot compensate for the novel’s shortcomings. The storyline gets to a point that must surely be almost the climax, almost the end, but the book is only half-read and abruptly takes a turn with another shocking reveal before plunging into Part 2.
These twists have solid set-ups, so the reveals are effective and believable with only a slight stretch of the imagination. The choice to go along with whatever wild turn is around the corner is made easier because each one is so interesting and exciting, they’re worth exploring despite any outlandishness.