:A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over.
Hm. I hate trashing another beginning writer’s efforts. In fact, I so admire Addie Zierman for taking the time and having the courage to put herself on the page. She does some things very well: she has an amazing memory, with a special talent for remembering winsome and hilarious details; she portrays the people she loves, her husband and her two best friends, with warmth and love; she has moments of beautiful reflection gorgeously expressed, like the night of her bachelorette party culminating in a skinny dip in a local church’s baptismal pond. And I love her idea of “waking” to God, instead of being Born Again. Love that.
But overall I was confused. Zierman clearly has spent many years wrestling with the hurts of what she calls The Church People. But the most detailed part of that journey is her teen-aged relationship with “Missionary Boy” Chris and I honestly thought: this isn’t about being confused about your faith so much as it is being wrecked by a controlling, manipulative boy who doesn’t treat you well. Isn’t THIS the trauma she’s dealing with years later? And I wondered where her parents were in all this? They are conspicuously absent throughout to the point that I wondered: didn’t they notice what was going on? And if they did and didn’t do anything, why doesn’t Zierman address that?! Finally, there are long passages written in the second person that drove me crazy. She writes the story of her son’s birth in second person. I just didn’t understand why and so was constantly distracted by the transitions.
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