A Handbook of American Prayer: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Novel of 2004
Review: I was first exposed to Lucius Shepard when I heard him give a reading of a chapter from HANDBOOK, then a novel in progress, back in 2003. I was immediately hooked by the chapter's beguiling mixture of the quotidian (an Arizona souvenir shop) and the eerie (a customer who might be a god) and looked forward to the book's publication with great anticipation. Now that I have read it, I can't say that I'm disappointed in the slightest. This is a literary noir thriller of the highest caliber. During the most recent half-decade of his writing career, Lucius has concentrated on novellas and other shorter forms, and his skill for compacting plot is used to great effect in this full-length novel. The book's first thirty pages include enough incident and conflict to fuel an entire novel, and he's just getting started. His characterizations are full-bodied and introduce you to people you'll feel you've known through a long, fulfilling relationship by the time you reach the book's final pages. Lucius's settings, from smalltown Arizona to the Mexican border to the Chilean coast, are vivid and linger in the mind. His prose is rich and serves a cultural satire that never comes across as tiresome or preachy. But best of all, these virtues, enough by themselves to propel another book to the top of many "Ten Best" lists, are harnessed to a plot that grabs you by the throat and never lets go. Here's a book that's not only good for you, but which tastes good, too. After slogging through many highly-praised novels in recent years which sorely (and often successfully) tempted me to put them aside, the fact that this book, a work of high literary quality and ambition, could be so damn entertaining was a very, very welcome gift from the reading gods.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Shepard goes fantastic-lite in his critique of America
Review: Lucius Shepard, an immensely talented short story writer, is not known for his novel-length works. His short stories, at their best (see The Jaguar Hunter and Trujillo collections), expertly blend reality and fantasy, and his ornate prose is fine-tuned to reflect the strange, dream-like locales his narrators inhabit (be it South America, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, or Ground Zero, he is a master at describing other lands).

Shepard is too good to write a bad story, but when his stories don't work, they don't work for the same reason: his long sentences rumble instead of sing, and his political agendas suffocate the voice of his fictional narrators. Such are the flaws of Handbook.

Political views have a place in fiction - in fact, they're essential and inextricable from an author's voice - but they need to be blended organically into the story. As much as I agree with Shepard's opinions of Bush's America, I can only commend him for his boldness of voice; I only wish I found that voice to be a little more subtle and more essential to the telling of his tale.

A Handbook of American Prayer finds time to satirize many aspects of American culture (our obsession with fame, politics, media, religion, and more). But finds little time to push the boundaries of fantastic fiction. Shepard's novel, while an admirable effort, is too short on fantasy and long on agitprop. Or maybe I've just read too much Shepard this month, and after Trujillo and Viator my brain's just overdosed on Mr. Shepard?


Rating:
Summary: Great literate fantasy read
Review: Though I was reminded of both Nabokov's understated humor and Robert Bly's free verse in reading "Handbook of American Prayer," ultimately the book's a satisfying fantasy-genre read, comprising the pleasures of good noir, urban fantasy, and magic realism without neatly fitting any of those categories. "Handbook" doesn't really satirize the TV religion or Hollywood celebrities it involves. Given Shepard's propensity for full-scale attack on media icons, he's surprisingly restrained (though one popular film critic gets a good raking-over). The media trappings merely support the book's exploration of imprisonment -- how the narrator, lacking purpose in his life, falls into jail, goes through a hero's journey to find and exploit the magic that helps him survive it and prosper on the outside, and then extricates himself from that magic to win some psychological freedom. It's a lengthier treatment of the theme Shepard explored so well in the excellent novella "Jailwise" but arrives at a different, more optimistic conclusion, both figuratively and plotwise. Shepard employs a lot of his usual tropes -- altered states of consciousness, obsessive love, seedy locales -- but the narrator follows a different character arc than his usual protagonist, finding his way through an exercise of self-determination and loyalty that his characters usually can't manage, due to their natures or circumstances. "Handbook" is a smooth, coherent, satisfying read, consistently interesting and exciting.