Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir by Susan E. IsaacsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Read the title of this book. Then read the subtitle. What you just read is exactly what Susan Isaacs delivers: her snarky but authentic memoir, told as a series of angry conversations with God.
Fed up with feeling abused and neglected, Isaacs finds a priest-turned-therapist named Rudy and announces to him that she wants to bring God to couples counseling. From there she backs up and tells the story of he relationship with God, from a childhood of adoration and dedication to an adulthood of perusal and frustration, she tracks God’s will back and forth between New York and L.A., trying to make a life for herself whether with a church, with a man, or with a television series. She writes the dialogues between God, Jesus, Rudy, and herself in theatrical
God:
Susan:
Rudy:
style, which breaks up her narrative and serves to contextualize the “present” time of the book, in which she is seeking a new relationship with the sarcastic, annoyed God she thinks she knows.
I cannot say that I necessarily relate to Isaacs, her faith, or even most of her experiences (even though I, too, live in New York). Perhaps I expected to, because I too doubt God and am frustrated by him. However, this is never really the reason to read a memoir, and as a memoir, this book works splendidly. It is like Eat, Pray, Love, only without nearly the same degree of dragged-out self-indulgence, and with an added religiously moral ending.
I found the book amusing, and I think anyone who enjoys reading about religion or reading memoirs would find it worthwhile, too.
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2 comments:
I read your review of this book and was intrigued so I picked it up from the library. I'm a couple chapters in and love it so far! I keep laughing - sometimes at the dialogue and sometimes at myself and the church and how true some of her observations are. Thanks for reviewing it!
Good! I'm so glad you found it (the review AND the book) worthwhile. Sometimes I wonder if anyone reads these, but I still post them, more for my own record of what I've read than anything else!
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