Synopsis
As he did with Creator and Satan’s Psychotherapy and Cure, Jeremy Leven has once again created pure magic with this hilarious, moving, and thought-provoking tale of a man who abandons all to search for Perfect Love. And what could be more perfect to love than the Messiah, who now reappears in the prophesied Second Coming as a knockout young female. Declared to be the God of All Gods, She (her name is, in fact, She) beckons our protagonist, the somewhat bewildered Max Pincus, on a journey which is part Canterbury Tales and part, it becomes increasingly evident, a tongue-in-cheek reworking of the New Testament, from virgin birth to Sermon on the Mount, to… well that would give away what Leven has carefully crafted in this extraordinary tale.
Ultimately a love-story, along Pincus’s journey to find the new young female Savior, he finds himself attracting a growing cast of self-proclaimed apostles (who, it appears, are neither called nor chosen, but don’t especially care), including Rosalie (questionably a – not the – Virgin Mother), Theo Wainwright (an antique dealer who is seeking a satisfactory explanation for the recent passing of his wife of many decades), Sister Gloria Gloria (who keeps the assembly on the most devout spiritual path), Florence (the owner of a New England Bed and breakfast who longs for a life that can be called special), her husband, Sparky (a romantic without the normal bounds one might expect with this designation), his brother, Elliott (along with Sparky, the inventor of the gigantic – and perhaps lethal – Singing Machine, a device with a will of its own and a continually morphing and haunting song which leads all who join Pincus to seek out the new Savior to explain the song’s true meaning, dragging the Singing Machine along with them as they go), Meyer Steinmeyer (a philosopher seeking to define with great precision the exact moment a girl becomes a woman and whose nationality and accent seems to change depending on his mood and the weather), and The Thaumaturge (the father of the present Virgin Mother, who may or may not have been responsible for the possibly immaculate conception and who is a fervent anti-synoptic, having an extensive list of reasons why the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not to be taken seriously).
But it is the budding romance between the Savior and Max Pincus which drives the story, as the so-called apostles attempt to determine whether She is, in fact, the Savior, in which case they have strong reservations about Pincus dating her.
At the end, Leven ingeniously leaves us with a tale which puts us in the midst of what might have been occurring had we been among the original apostles as they encountered the Messiah, and he suggests a world which might have been had the true intentions of the Messiah been realized. It is a comedy of the highest order.
Review
This was an interesting take on what might happen if there was a second coming. However, this second coming isn’t like anything you could imagine. The book follows a band of characters that in a way could be like the apostles to Jesus. There is even a virgin mother in the merry group.
This book is billed as a comedy and while there are funny parts in it, I didn’t think the book was hilarious unless you take it as tongue-in-cheek. When I first started reading the book I didn’t think I was going to be able to finish the book because the first 10% of the book felt very abstract and I wasn’t sure what direction the book would take. I’m glad I stuck with the book because the story really picked up for me and I was curious to see how the story was going to end.
I think you have to look at this book as a journey and it is challenging our beliefs in God, religion, and humanity. Do we take everything at face value or should we dig a little deeper into life and its meaning? I enjoyed the interchange between She and the rest of the group because she did challenge their thoughts and beliefs and perhaps made them consider other possibilities other that what had been fed to them all their life.
I wondered about Max Pincus and his feeling that he was meant to be in a relationship with She. I think it was more than we ever experience as humans and transcended everything. The ending confirms that thought and I liked how the author wound everything up for the reader.
Overall we give this 3 1/2 paws. The path was long but gives us much food for thought.
About the Author
Jeremy Leven, author of THE SAVIOR AND THE SINGING MACHINE, is an acclaimed screenwriter, novelist, and Hollywood director. His novels, published in 17 languages, include Creator and Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S. He wrote and directed the films Don Juan DeMarco (with Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway) and Girl on a Bicycle and has written the screenplays for The Notebook, Creator, The Legend of Bagger Vance, My Sister’s Keeper, and Real Steel, among others. Leven was educated at St. John’s College, Harvard University, University of Connecticut, and Yale Medical School where he was a fellow in the Department of Psychiatry’s Child Study Center. Prior to film and fiction, he has been a Harvard faculty member, a Professor of Psychopharmacology, and Director of a Mental Health Center. Leven divides his time between homes in Connecticut and Manhattan. He is currently working on a non-fiction book, a play for Paris on François Premier, as well as a screenplay for Tom Hanks.
is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers. She is the author of twenty-three published crime novels, including standalone Gothic thrillers, the Constable Molly Smith series, and the Year Round Christmas Mysteries. Under the pen name of Eva Gates
she is the national bestselling author of the Lighthouse Library cozy series.
, will be released in March 2017 from Crooked Lane Books.
About the Author
I grew up reading everything I could get my grubby hands on, from my mom’s Harlequin romances to Nancy Drew, to Little Women. When I wasn’t flipping pages in a library book, I was penning horrendous poems, writing songs no one should ever sing, or drafting stories which have thankfully been destroyed. College and a stint in the U.S. Army came along, robbing me of free time to write and read, although on the odd occasion I did manage to sneak a book into my rucksack between rolled up socks, MRIs, t-shirts, and cold weather gear. After surviving the army experience, I went back to school and got my law degree. I jumped ship and joined the hubby in the Netherlands before the graduation ceremony could even begin. A few years into my legal career, I was exhausted, fed up, and just plain done. I quit my job and sat down to write a manuscript, which I promptly hid in the attic after returning to the law. But practicing law really wasn’t my thing, so I quit (again!) and went off to Germany to start a B&B. Turns out running a B&B wasn’t my thing either. I polished off that manuscript languishing in the attic before following the husband to Istanbul where I decided to give the whole writer-thing a go. But ten years was too many to stay away from my adopted home. I packed up again and moved to The Hague where I’m currently working on my next book. I hope I’ll always be working on my next book.
The new novel from award-winning author Lisa Sandlin catches up with the almost-murdered secretary Delpha Wade (The Do-Right, 2015, set in 1973) as she’s released from a hospital in order to be tucked into the back seat of a police cruiser. Her boss, P. I. Tom Phelan, sets out to spring her. He needs her back in his investigation business, where he’ll soon be chasing a skulking grand larcenist and plotting how to keep a ganjapreneur out of the grabby hands of a brand new agency, the D.E.A. Delpha digs through old records and knocks on strange doors to unravel the dangerous case of two brothers with beaucoup aliases—verifying that sometimes truth is not true, but murder is always murder.
Lisa Sandlin is the author of The Do-Right, winner of the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America and the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers. Her new mystery thriller The Bird Boys is set in 1973 in the same town she was born, Beaumont, Texas. Her previous books are The Famous Thing About Death and Message to the Nurse of Dreams, Cinco Puntos Press; In the River Province, SMU Press; and You Who Make the Sky Bend, Pinyon Publishing.
About the Author
In 1991, twenty-one-year-old Sarah, the recently divorced mother to two-year-old Hayley, moved from the dusty small town of Farmington, New Mexico to the bustling city of Houston, Texas with dreams of a better life. A year later, she was swept off her feet by Greg Swindell, an established Major League Baseball player who had just signed a lucrative contract with the Houston Astros and was quickly becoming the talk of the city.
Sarah Swindell lives in the Austin area with her husband, Greg, a former Major League Baseball player and 2019 Texas Sports Hall of Fame inductee. Sarah is a commercial actress/model and has been working in the industry for over thirty years. She enjoys spending her free time with her four grown children and several grandchildren who reside in Texas as well.
