Uh oh, I have two other books by Irving. I did like the premise; this idea that this foil character would explore their faith via someone that inexplicably does have faith, and undeniably seems tapped into knowledge they shouldn’t have, despite being, in every other way, segregated to an out-group for his strange voice and undeveloped anatomy, etc.. But the problem is that you can tell Irving is a plot based author right away, it’s all very snug and pat—prescriptive to the whole ten yards, all-in, kind of way. And I found it annoying that the protagonist continues to insinuate Owen is dead right away but we don’t learn how, inorganically, until the very end. It doesn’t work with how the guy’s thoughts work, making the organization of the chapters more suspect than enjoyable to me.

Though, this is well done for the type of story it is. The prose are descent, the characters developed, but, kind of like Franzen, it all feels sterile to me because of how engineered to the core everything is. It overthrows sentimentality in its pitching game and when it goes at-bat, I already know if it will hit or not in a scene, because we already know most of the outcome. I do not get attached to characters like this and the subsequent plot ends with a thud for me, rather than a bang.

Just fine, not great. It’s a way to tell a story, and I can see why people into this kind of thing are into it. Fredrick Backman, Midnight Library guy, aforementioned Franzen - I’d prefer my fiction to be more like a discussion with an open mind, than a conclusion I ought to see by the end because that’s pretty much all I’ve ever been shown. That’s what articles and essays are for, not fiction, imo.