Book Review: Help Thanks Wow The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott

Help Thanks Wow

The Three Essential Prayers

Author: Anne Lamott

Publisher: The Penguin Group

Date of Publication:  November 13, 2012

Pages: 112 (Hardcover Edition)

      

     Anne Lamott has crafted another gem in her own quirky, humorous and genuine style.  Anyone who has read her previous essays on faith and religion (Traveling Mercies, Plan B and Grace) will recognize this sincere effort to share her personal journey and struggles with faith and notions of God, salvation and the hereafter.  She uses many of her own life experiences to illustrate the points she makes about what she calls the three essential prayers: Help, Thanks and Wow.  

   The author also uses insightful stories of how others have tried to resolve the same issues.  In the section on
"Help" she recounts :

     "I don't pray for God to do this or that or for God's sake to knock it off, or for specific outcomes.  Well, okay, maybe a little.  When my great hero Arthur Ashe had had AIDS for quite a while, he said: 'God's will alone matters.  When I played tennis, I never prayed for victory in a match.  I will not pray now to be cured of heart disease or AIDS.'  So I pray, Help. Hold my friends in your light."

   She also extols the virtue of intercessory prayer, saying "If one person is praying for you, watch out!  Things are going to start to happen!"  In the end, though,it is the author's self-deprecating and never ending sense of humor which enlightens and uplifts the reader such as when she calls grace "spiritual WD-40."  This is an unusual book about prayer, but one worthy of reading and much reflection.  It reminds the reader that no one has the answers and that we all must come to our own reasoned and self-sustaining "religion" which works for each of us.

     

Book Review: The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler

The Beginner's Goodbye

Author: Anne Tyler

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Date of Publication: January 29, 2013

Pages: 210 (Trade Paperback Edition)

     This book has the most remarkable opening line in recent memory: "The strangest thing about my wife's return from the dead was how other people reacted."  So begins one one of the most poignant and moving stories about death, grieving and marriage which I have ever read.

     The story is told in the first person by a young widower named Aaron.  This man, like most Anne Tyler characters (and like most of us), is flawed.  In this case, Aaron has a physical disability from a childhood illness and confidence issues from growing up with a protective, dominating mother and older sister.  This book is character driven, as are all of this author's wonderful works.  This book is full of imperfect, very human characters.  Characters to which the reader can readily identify, recognize and, well, like!  The magic of The Beginner's Goodbye is that the author takes these wonderfully funky characters and weaves a tale of loss and grief which is all at once sad and uplifting.

     Aaron's musings inevitably evolve into an introspective of his marriage's high points and failings.  Regrets are mulled and areas where things could have been handled differently or with more feeling and concern are examined.  At one point Aaron reflects:

     "I used to toy with the notion that when we die we find out what our lives have amounted to, finally.  I'd never imagined that we could find that out when somebody else dies."

This theme has appeared in many of Anne Tyler's stories.  That is, that we are who we are through our relationships with others.  In The Beginner's Goodbye she distills this notion down to how the lives of us married folk in large part are defined by our choice of spouse and the nurturing (or lack of nurturing) of that relationship over time.

    All of us are human and will at some time or another suffer a tremendous loss: a parent, a spouse or a child.  Everyone can relate to Aaron and his struggles.   This story sticks with you and serves as a not-so-gentle reminder that we need to appreciate our loved ones and make the best of every minute of every day.  Things can change in a heartbeat.

Book Review: Inferno by Dan Brown

Inferno

Author: Dan Brown

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Date of Publication: May 14, 2013

Pages: 558 (NOOK Edition)

   About two pages into Dan Brown's Inferno I had an incredible feeling of deja vu.  I felt like I had read this before.  This author wrote a blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code, in 2003.  He created a unique character in Robert Langdon, an art historian and "symbologist" who deciphered a code painted into "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci.  A sudden act of violence triggered a hectic race against an international conspiracy.  Landon was aided by a female counterpart, a brilliant and beautiful cryptologist, who became more than a colleague.  The Da Vinci Code dashed through Paris, London and New York before it concluded back at The Louvre in Paris.  Substitute Dante for da Vinci, The Divine Comedy for "The Last Supper", a brilliant and beautiful physician for the cryptologist and Florence, Venice and Istanbul for the three cities and you have this novel.  The conspiracy is different here and the stakes are higher, but it's the same formula.

   The author certainly does his research, however.  The descriptions of the locales are superb and I am ready to sign up for an "Inferno tour" of Florence.  The lavish explanations and expositions regarding the artworks encountered are well done also.  My quibble with these, however, is that they tend to interrupt the action.  It's like getting an art appreciation lecture in the middle of watching "Die Hard".  I would also recommend that if they make a movie of this that they replace Tom Hanks with Usain Bolt as Robert Langdon since the character spends most of the story running helter-skelter from police, museum guards, the World Health Organization as well as his own claustrophobia and paranoia.  

     This was an interesting and informative read but, in my opinion, a repetitive one.