The Visit and Other Short Stories

Rating:
Summary: A heart warming set of stories.
Review: Every story in this set touches the secret person within us all. I laughed, I wept, I saw myself in so many ways. A must read from the Plass collection. If you don't read it you will truely miss something very special.

Rating:
Summary: Parables with powerful prose, but a meaning too hidden!
Review: Published in the UK under the title "The Final Boundary" and in North America under the title "The Visit", this offering from Adrian Plass is a collection of nine short stories he calls "modern parables". Adrian Plass has garnered quite a reputation in Great Britain for his best-selling books, chiefly marked by their inspirational nature, and high humour. This collection of stories is marked more by their serious tone than by their humour. The lengthiest story - "The Visit" - was in fact born while Plass was struggling with an illness in 1984, and the rest of the stories, says Plass, "are parts of my shadow."

One doesn't have to read very far to discover that Plass has a unique style of prose and story-telling that is far superior to most contemporary Christian writers. It's captivating, colourful, and convincing. What's more, there's nothing "light" about these stories. Taking his cue from Christ's parables, Plass states that "a parable is a story that entertains at the front door while the truth slips through a side window." By means of his parables, Plass aims to give us more than an entertaining read, but to impart important truths about the Christian faith in the guise of fictional stories: "Each one embodies a truth about living in this complex world, and each has been a hard learned lesson for me."

In some cases the "truth" and "lesson" is clearly discernible. Under the guise of a story about climbing Mt. Snowden "A Letter to William" presents a clear warning about calling yourself a Christian but failing to obey Christ, being a hearer but not a doer of the Word. "The Second Pint" features a character who is convinced he is only half-hearted in love for the church, but fully devoted in his love for the world, but is in for a shock when the world rejects him and he is cast into the outer darkness. It is a cleverly reversed warning that those who are convinced that they are only half-hearted in love for the world but fully devoted in their love for the church will find themselves subject to the same fate. "Small World" demonstrates that unlike earthly fathers who forsake their sons, heavenly Father will never forsake His adopted sons, because He already has forsaken His only begotten Son for their sake. And "The Final Boundary" is a treat for cricket fans, since it uses the joys and failures of a final innings in a cricket match to mirror the joys and failures of the Christian life, and illustrate how Christ redeems us from our greatest failures and brings us into eternal glory. The problem with most of the stories, however, is that the truth that Plass aims to impart is far from self-evident, and sometimes rather too hidden. "Nearly Cranfield" is a sensitive and understanding psychological picture of how a child copes with grief after the death of his grandmother, and how his family fails to understand him, but what really is the point? And is the message of the morbid "Why it Was All Right to Kill Uncle Reginald" a warning about judging hypocritically, since the writer who condemns his uncle for his abnormality in the end proves to have abnormal traits of his own? Is "Bethel" making a point about the power of forgiveness? I really don't know, and it would have been nice if Plass had told us.

In many cases I was left pondering after reading a story with the thought: "That was most enjoyable and there was definitely something profound behind that, but I haven't a clue what it was." Is it then the reader that has failed, or the author? It would seem to me that in writing his own modern parables, Plass appears to have forgotten a key aspect of the parables he seeks to emulate - Jesus explained them to his disciples and made the meaning clear for them. It's unfortunate that Plass doesn't do the same for us, because in many cases we are left like some of the crowds in the time of Jesus - hearing, but not understanding.

"The Visit" - an account of a visit of Jesus to a present day church - is the longest but most problematic story of them all. Sadly, I found it disrespectful and blasphemous, because it fails to take into account the uniqueness of Christ's earthly ministry as a once-only time of humiliation and suffering. Not only does Plass over-emphasize Christ's humanity at the expense of his divinity, but he does not do justice to the fact that Christ's mission was unrepeatable. The point of the parable is to warn against having a fictional Jesus that is different than the real one, but by creating a fictional Jesus, Plass falls into the very trap he warns against - for who is to say that Plass' Jesus is like the real one? It's shaky ground indeed.

But that's not to say that these stories cannot be read without profit. Some of them are gems, and all of them exhibit superb literary qualities. I recommend these stories - with reservations - for the thoughtful Christian reader who wants to read for profit and not merely for pleasure, and who is capable of careful discernment.