Author: John Addison Dally
Rating: 1.75 stars / 5 stars
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Favorite Quote: “I just don’t want a tiny piece of something that once belonged to me entirely.” Dally, John Addison. The Master is Here: Stories Christian and Gay. E-book ed., Tortoise Books, 2021.
Review: Thank you to the publisher, Tortoise Books, and the Edelweiss platform for the free e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.
So, to start, I like the concept of this book. This collection of short stories is clearly designed to show how queer identities and Christian identities can exist in harmony (though there’s plenty of tension and social pressures that interfere). That point is a necessary one and one that is well made.
It’s just - the book is trying WAY. TOO. HARD. And in various ways. For instance, in “I Am the Rose of Sharon” there are two aspects of the story that are just generally trying too hard: the first is how the author keeps incorporating aspects to technology and other modern phenomena. Rather than bolstering the narrative or driving it along, these references often fell flat and seemed clunky. The character of Kyle also just seemed unbelievable. He had a number of interesting characteristics that, acting individually, would have created a believable, multi-dimensional character. But all of his eccentricities and anxieties thrown into one character without much space to investigate his psyche just made him seem like a caricature, and not a particularly well developed one.
Despite that, I honestly would have enjoyed this book more and rated it higher if not for the last story in the collection. Background about me: I went to a liberal arts college that encouraged folks to take all sorts of different types of classes and pursue different studies. So, in that spirit, I took a class that explored the Old Testament. So I’ve read the story of Job. I hope this doesn’t come off as sacrilegious (as someone actively deconstructing, I’m not sure how I feel about sacrilege), I was horrified by the story then. And at least it had a somewhat compelling narrative structure. “The Trials of Jody,” the last story in this collection, is a poorly written modern adaption of the story of Job. The “trying too hard” aspect of the book discussed earlier was full force in this story, to the point that it was cringeworthy.
About that Quote: Despite my criticisms of this collection, Dally clearly is a talented writer. And this line demonstrates that. We all know I’m a sucker for figurative language, and this, right here, shows that Dally himself may be a master (get it?) of figurative language.
Have you read The Master is Here: Stories Christian and Gay? Share your thoughts below!
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