Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul

Rating:
Summary: Spiritual Uplifting
Review: Don't get me wrong, though it is an uplifting book in many ways, you also see or should I say 'Feel' the heartbreak along the way. This is a Powerful read. There have only been a few books that have touched me so deeply-'Father Joe' is one of them, as well as 'Nightmares Echo','Running With Scissors'and 'A Million Little Pieces'

Rating:
Summary: It's not "Tuesdays with Joe"
Review: "Father Joe" is an unexpected stunner; not a "Me and My Mentor" book at all. It's a brush with greatness that wouldn't brush off. A real-life parable. An atheist's prayer.

Don't be scared off by the "Father" in the title. It doesn't mean you have to know (or care) about Catholicism or any other religion to "get" the book. Its lessons are hardly church-specific. There's even a paradoxical quote from the title guy on this point: "God loves atheists as much as believers. P-p-probably more."

Also don't be scared off by the idea of "lessons." This book preaches nothing. It discovers things -- resonant truths -- and the reader can't help but discover those truths along with the author.

If you don't laugh, cry, and learn something from "Father Joe," you're already dead.

Caveat: Have Google close at hand when you read. The author's language is clear but some of his analogies are a bit arcane. (Hendra's scholarship appears to predate his Cambridge education. His 14-year-old self, as recounted in the book, knows more than most adults I can think of.) It's hard not to be embarrassed bringing a standard American education to this party, because we are generally taught so little about literature and history.

Update June 8 -- based on feedback here, I started a Yahoo discussion group for "Father Joe" at groups.yahoo.com/group/father_joe_group

Rating:
Summary: Good read... but...
Review: Father Joe is a very entertaining and wonderful story about a man who really makes a difference in people's lives. On that level it's engaging and involving, although I agree a bit with some of the other complaints I've seen that Hendra goes out of his way to insult Thatcher and Reagan, and doesn't tie those details in too well to the rest of the story.

My chief issue, though, is that nowhere do I get the impression that Hendra ever got the real message this priest should have had to offer. I don't know if it's because Father Joe didn't tell it well or because Hendra didn't hear it well. Hendra seems to be searching for a spiritual experience for it's own sake, and on that level, it's a pretty selfish quest, which migh explain why it is so disappointing. But that's just not what Christianity is about. It's about a unique individual who is both God and man and who's still alive, even though he was killed.

At one point in the book Hendra tells Father Joe that he only senses God's presence when he's with Father Joe. He should keep looking!

Rating:
Summary: What am I missing?
Review: I bought this book as soon as I read Andrew Sullivan's ecstatic review in the New York Times Book Review - the review seemed to promise that Father Joe would accomplish all that self-help books set out to do, but that it would do so with none of the genre's intellectual flimsiness. This book was going to give me wisdom, spiritual enlightenment, and peace of mind, and it was going to do it in a narrative so gripping that I'd read through the night.

It seems highly possible that my expectations were set unrealistically high, but this book delivered on very little of its promise. The narrative is, first of all, about as gripping as your average episode of Behind the Music (Innocence leading to Corruption leading to Redemption) - I don't find Behind the Music particularly un-gripping, but it certainly doesn't keep me up past my bedtime. More disappointing, though, is the figure of Father Joe himself. He seems, based on the little we see of him, like a sweet, sweet man. A good listener, open-minded, not too self-serious. But the portrait we get of him is nowhere near full enough to warrant the life-changing ecstacy promised by Sullivan and other reviewers here. Father Joe is here presented as being less complex than many cartoon characters, and not much wiser than many a book of Inspiring Quotations - what is it about this portrait that so many people have found so affecting?

If you aren't a fan of books like Tuesdays with Morrie and Five People You Meet in Heaven - books I was hoping Father Joe would soar beyond - then I'd advise you to save your money. I sold my copy the day I finished it.

Rating:
Summary: A book that really is impossible to put down
Review: I have rarely read a book that I truly couldn't put down--Anna Karenina, Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers Once and Young--everyone has their own list, and religious books are not likely to be on many people's lists.

But Hendra really has written a religious book that is almost impossible to put down until it is finished. His decades of writing comedy are apparent in this masterful memoir, not because there are funny passages in the book, although there are, but because of his superb ability to see into the heart of a dramatic situation and to tell the story well. Somebody said that a sense of humour is a sense of perspective, and Hendra has perspective on many aspects of the complex, subtle, and powerfully moving story of his soul's interaction with the great spiritual mentor Father Joseph Warrilow.

This is a book that every reader will come to terms with in their own way, so I will confine myself to a few general remarks. It is amazing how vividly Hendra recalls the crucial events that led up to, and included his encounter with Father Joe, which occurred 40 years ago. These life changing experiences are recounted in a way that is cinematic and vivid--totally opposite to the vagueness with which he recounts the sex, drugs and rock n'roll period that constituted much of his adulthood. Secondly, this book threatens to turn into a "I screwed up my first marriage but then I figured out what I did wrong through my wonderful second marriage to my wonderful, and much younger, second wife" (in this part of the book, Hendra ironically echoes Joe Esterhazy's recent memoir Hollywood Animal)--but then Hendra has another plot surprise up his sleeve which rescues his book from these doldrums and takes it back to its former, superb level.

My final comment, which may sound ungrateful coming from a reader who absolutely loved this wonderful book, is that while Father Joe comes across as a great man, the author himself remains somewhat unlikeable, despite the transformations caused by Father Joe's decades of patient mentoring. The book has been compared to The Confessions of Augustine, but if this comparision is partly true, it is because of how it reveals the spiritual greatness of Father Joe, not because of what it reveals about the spiritual qualities of Hendra, who remains a sort of spiritual Everyman or Homer Simpson. But perhaps that is the secret of its strange, gripping power, come to think of it . . .

Rating:
Summary: Great Expectations Sadly Diminished
Review: I sent for this book the day I read the NY Times review which was a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10. As a male Catholic a few years younger than the author I was drawn to it for many reasons. As one who does not typically read books about guys like "Morrie", I was intrigued by the Times reviewer's perspective on how this book could touch those that had become distant from the church but were still looking for a guiding light. My problem with the book is that the writing is stilted, the author can't seem to stop trying to dazzle the reader with series of thesaurus driven adjectives and finally, I found I did not like the author. There is no doubt that Father Joe was a special man to many and someone I would love to have met. Its too bad he had to spend so much time with someone who is so self-pitying and mean spirited that it took him 40 years to finally get what Father Joe was saying - hey Tony, you're the problem! The author could have had that figured out for him after a couple of sessions with a shrink or possibly listening to all the people he alienated over the years.

There are parts of the book that are excellent - basically the beginning where he first meets Father Joe and the end where he takes his sons to meet him after the "I'm the problem light bulb" goes on. Most of what's in the middle (basically the authors life) is not very interesting unless you enjoy reading about a narcissist.

Rating:
Summary: Story of soul-searching while coming to terms with oneself.
Review: Still, Tony wasn't ready to take good over evil. He continued life, going though a tumble into substance abuse, hollow satisfaction as head writer of National Lampoon, and a failed marriage. All along, he struggles with himself as he attempts to find the true meaning of life. The shadow that Father Joe had cast over him in his youth will not let his soul conform to the materialist satisfaction of the world. Eventually, he comes to terms with what Father Joe had attempted to explain to that rebellious teenager so many years earlier and continued to patiently tell him through the years. In the end, Hendra deserts his self-hating ways, as is the case with the ideal stories. Tony eventually finds good over evil and embraces the ways that Father Joe unwearyingly showed him for many years.

The story is about Hendra and Father Joe, but has a hidden reflection on those readers that go through the same private internal war of their own. A well-written book that will do more than just inform and entertain; it will guide you if you let it. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Another Book Club Speaks
Review: This is a fantastically written,honest and emotional with so much wisdom to leanr from. My club thoroughly enjoyed this book. Father Joe: The Man Who Saved MY Soul is simply put an excellent book for all to read. It rates up there in my eyes with other great books that my club has had the privellege of reading lately, namely: Nightmares Echo (Katlyn Stewart),My Fractured Life (Rikki Lee Travolta),The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom),I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)

All great book club suggestions to read!