Rating: 
Summary: Just Try to Digest This Food for Thought
Review: I became aware of James Morrow because I happen to live in the same town as him. He's made the local news a few times as his books have been banned by religious conservatives. This is my first novel of his and I can see what the fuss is about. There are some truly hysterical plot elements in this story, like God's corpse floating in the ocean, a sinful civilization rising from the sea, and a rambunctious World War II reenactment that ends up with as much carnage as the real thing. There are some gaps in the plot madness, and a few boners like two characters near the end of the book observing the Milky Way from the middle of Manhattan (remember: light pollution). But those glitches are minor. While your mind reels at the bizarre concepts of the plot, Morrow injects some heavy sermonizing on the state of Christianity, from a clear rationalist and atheist perspective. This is the source of the religious trouble, but folks who ban books think you are too weak to think for yourself. There is real food for thought here, and while it might not be digestible for everybody, you can still find this novel to be one of the more bizarre and entertaining things you've read in a while.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Characters
Review: The author treats his characters with great dignity and compassion, even as they go about their odd task. The priest and the nun ring true as real people, and their relationship (or lack thereof) seems very honest. The great thing about this book is that, except for the Corpus Dei, it exists in the real world, where real people live, making realistic decisions. Fun! I'm a devout Christian, but I'd read this athiest's work again.
Rating:
Summary: Talk About Serving God!
Review: I enjoyed the entire book. The subplots offer fascinating questions to think about years later. For instance; how was Cassie, a self-avowed atheist, changed when she forced herself to pray for rescue and then the non-existent "jerk" came through?
God's will, serendipity, What???
I wish Mr. Morrow had chosen "Serving God" as the title.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent premise, questionable execution
Review: Towing Jehovah has one of the best starting points for a plot that I have ever seen: GOD IS DEAD(!) Body's fallen into the ocean. Some dude's gotta go get him out. When I first heard about this book, I was almost overcome with giddy excitement. Unfortunately, this book doesn't go about the story in the way that you might expect. The "dead God" angle is actually secondary to the human interest part of the story - which is as it should be, some might say, but I came into this book looking for a theological satire, not a human story with a dead God as the backdrop. This is not to say the book is bad, however. It is, in fact, quite good. It just may not be exactly what you're expecting. As satire, it falls short of Vonnegut and Heller - and even Heinlein's masterful JOB - and, while sharp-toothed and biting at times - and even funny at others - it's not the main part of the story. This book offers few outright criticisms of religion - indeed, though the author is a claimed atheist, one derives an almost sympathetic feeling for organized religion and theists from this book by the end of the story. Perhaps the author realizes religion's opiatic theraputic qualities - due to the placebo effect, as one character in the book would say - and considers it a necessary evil. It's not even the sacreligious. Though some parts of the book are absolutely laugh out loud funny - the part where they start cutting up God to make cheeseburgers always makes me laugh, as does the part where the priest and the nun are dancing naked together in God's navel, to the tune of a loud song blaring from the speakers of the Jeep Wrangler that got them there - I truly believe that most theists - though not fundamentalists - would not even have a problem reading this book, being offended by it. Indeed, it brings up some good points. This book is not, as you may expect a critique of God or organized religion - nor is it a theodicy; check out the second book in this trilogy, Blameless In Abaddon, for that. I think it does bring out one very good - and oddly rarely-mentioned - point, though: that of The Bible and organized religon's role in the subversion of women. Womankind's centuries long struggle for equality and their centuries of toil under subversion and the subordinate role under men can be traced back to none other than - Adam and Eve, in the garden. Eve at the apple; God subordinated women to men for the rest of eternity. Thus, from this sprung gender stereotyping, chauvinism, sexual inequality - the whole bit. Why isn't this point brought up more? It seems quite obvious to me. I once wrote a paper over the subject for school. Morrow recognizes this, and brings it out in the book. It is one of the few fairly original points brought out in the book, and makes it worth reading. Overall, this IS a good book, and one that I would reccommend. You might not get exactly what you thought you would get going in, but you will get a good, and fairly thought-provoking read. I will tell you this, too: read the other two books in the series as well. They are a great improvement over this one, and Morrow has certainly grown and matured as a writer. Heartily reccommended semi-irrevent reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, but not as deep as it could've been
Review: Great premise: God has died, and his two-mile-long body is floating in the Atlantic. The angels have hollowed out a tomb in the Arctic ice, and the Vatican hires an oil tanker to tow God's corpse to its final resting place. Despite how that might sound, the book didn't strike me as particularly irreverent (and I'm a practicing Catholic). In Morrow's universe, what counts is a sincere and thoughtful concern for truth and goodness and forgiveness. The run-of-the-mill Christians come off as foolish and only superficially "faithful," but the Jesuit scientist/theologian and the Carmelite nun are two of the more admirable characters. The dogmatic atheists come off as narrow-minded bigots, but the reflective atheists who actually care about truth and about saving people from suffering are okay. The interesting questions that are raised by God's "death" aren't explored as well as they might have been, and the romance is unconvincing, but this is still an entertaining story, and I look forward to reading the second book in the trilogy, "Blameless in Abaddon."
Rating:
Summary: Religious Meditation on a Serious Subject
Review: The first book in James Morrow's "Jehovah" trilogy, "Towing Jehovah," introduces readers to the idea that God has, in fact, died, and His gigantic corpse is drifting in the Atlantic. Tanker captain Anthony Van Horn learns this from no less than a dying angel, while attempting to atone for an ecological disaster he caused. Soon, an emissary from the Vatican confirms it, and Van Horn is off to tow God's corpse to the Arctic to prevent it from decaying in the elements and to preserve whatever brain function God might have left. At first glance, this might seem like a pithy, clever, and self-serving attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like any intelligent satirist, Morrow attacks the extremes on both sides; it is imperative that the mission is kept a secret to keep it from a public that might not understand, and it becomes important to a society of gawdawful liberal humanists that God's body be destroyed so that no one ever discovers it. The humanists and atheists are the most obvious targets of Morrow's lampooning, and for good reason: the bourgeoisie snobbery they exhibit shows not only the narrowest of minds, but also one of the most hypocritical belief-systems on the planet (much like the fundamentalist Christians, who receive the lampoon-stick in the next book of the trilogy). In fact, this book takes away one of the most ambiguous aspects of religion: the existence of God. What God's dead body does is FORCE people to accept that He was, at least at one time, quite real and quite alive. By taking God's existence as a matter of empirical fact instead of a matter of faith, "Towing Jehovah" can then outline a concrete, believable, and very real cosmology about the nature of God and the meaning of human existence - and, according to the story, that might just be what God was planning all along. Morrow is an exceptional writer, although his style hasn't matured as much in this first book as it does in the other two. His ideas show a unique kind of absurdist creativity, but that's a good thing: it is only in the most absurd, extreme situations that philosophies and cosmologies can really be tested. Satirical science fiction may be the funniest way to do so, and the way that reaches the most people. What good is theology when one has to wade through twenty volumes of Aquinas, or try to understand Heidegger's convoluted language? By demonstrating philosophical possibilities, Morrow uses his exceptional talents to do his readers a favor. To that, one must raise the glass and toast his efforts. While Morrow's prose might not be Nabokov's, there is certainly enough allusion to keep it fresh and enough poetry to keep it timeless, regardless of the subject matter. All in all, the first part in a truly exceptional work of art.
Rating: 
Summary: Drivel.
Review: While there were some negative reviews describing this book as: "good idea, poor execution", I wanted to broaden my footing in the fantasy genre and decided to get a taste of Morrow's magic. What a disappointment, what a literary disaster. Pure drivel. While both Darwin, de Sade and Nietzsche have been dead for a while, I thought that a novel based on the premise of God's dead anthropomorphic body floating in the ocean, could still add points to a discourse that has been going on for approximately 150 years. Indeed, in better hands it might, but what Morrow presents us with here can be best described as a shallow screw up. In an interview with the author on one of the websites devoted to his work, I read that he walked around for a while with the image of a giant corpse floating in the ocean. Later he connected the dots and turned the corpse into God's dead remains and thus the idea for "towing" was born. Indeed the idea, while not exactly original, is cute and kept me away from a bottom of the barrel rating. But what about the execution? Let's be simple, Morrow leaves the huge potential of his premise completely untapped. Based on the way he develops his theme, it might as well have been a giant bucket of KFC special recipe that was floating in lower Oceania. Morrow uses the body like an odd prop to an otherwise frightfully brain dead type of soap opera. Believe me, if I have to ascribe one virtue to Morrow, it is that this book makes the likes of All my Children, General Hospital and As the World Turns look pretty good. While I am not an admirer of the historic choices of the Roman Catholic Church, I almost developed a feeling of pity for the shallowness that Morrow bestows on it. Where I of Christian belief in a pre-Nietzschian world, I might be tempted to tell the five star legion that I would pray for their souls. Since I am not, all I can say is "thanks a lot suckers for making me waste 5 hours of my time!". One final note in closing. On the cover of this book Booklist is quoted calling Morrow a genius. That remark, indeed, deserves a fantasy award!
Rating:
Summary: the whole is less than the sum of the parts
Review: ... You see the corpse of God being towed by a supertanker on the cover. The back cover starts with "God is dead" and proceeds to promise a tale full strange and troubled characters who are called on to deal with his rotting corpse. Morrow gets high marks doing an excellent job researching and explaining how an oil tanker operates. He does raise some interesting topics to consider: if God is the source of morality, does that mean we have free reign to do as we please after he dies? How could God die? However, it fails to even mention other interesting questions: if God is dead what becomes of those in heaven? What of Satan? Despite the high marks for the idea and the setting, the execution leaves something to be desired. I had three main complaints. The first is the relatively shallow characterization of most everyone in the book. The "romance" between the militant feminist and the tanker captain was probably the most egregious example of this, as the author gives nowhere near enough insight into the characters to make this believable. But it pervades the book. The nun Miriam dances naked with a priest in the belly button of God, yet neither one of them is ever seen really examining their actions. Indeed, that scene is the last we ever see of Miriam in the book. The characters who take part in the grizzly Roman coliseum style execution are never seen examining themselves and their actions. Secondly, the entire sojourn on Van Horne island felt contrived. Worse than contrived it raises the question of what power could have arranged for it to happen? If God is dead what force could cause an island to form where none had ever been? If God is dead who worked the miracle of his return? If God is dead what is the source of the mysterious fog? Yet the characters barely think to question the situation. Finally, the final resolution felt poorly constructed. The characters ask the question, "Who has the right to take away belief in God?" Rather than engage in any interesting and vigorous debate on the subject -- "Do people have a 'right' to believe in God in the first place?", "Does the Truth trump concerns of Faith?", "What man has the right to second guess the desires of the Almighty?" -- the characters mumble agreement and the book is suddenly over. The ending feels especially [small] in light of the sequel, where God's death has been made public and, in fact, his corpse turned into a theme park. The unfortunate thing is how much promise this book has.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected, but so much more than I had hoped.
Review: When I sought out this novel about God's corpse being towed across the ocean by a disgraced oil rig captain, I was expecting a hilarious farce along the lines of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's series, playing fast and loose with religious beliefs. Not so, I found, as the humor was much more dark and subtle, and nowhere near as zany as the subject matter would suggest. Not laugh out loud funny, but rather a sly and knowledgable humor, a wink and a nudge, say no more. But this wasn't a dissapointment, for what I found that Morrow handled successfully was the motivations behind both blind faith and lack thereof. Devout Christians and Athiests are represented at their most extreme, both rational and irrational, and neither side is truly taken by Morrow in his endeavor to explore God's true nature, both in reality and our mind's eye. Its not a comedy as much as it is a thinking-man's comedy of errors, and that's the best way I can think to recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: A poor man's Vonnegutt
Review: Yawn. I got bored with this book before I was off the first page. The premise sounded interesting, but there is a constant preachy undercurrent of self-rightiousness running through the book that makes it get old really, really fast. Besides, the book isn't even funny, just preachy. Do yourself a favor and re-read something by Vonnegutt if you want biting wit. It will be time better spent.
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