1. Lord Willing? Wrestling with God’s Role in My Child’s Death by Jessica Kelley (Herald Press, 2016): This book is a deft combination of a heart-wrenching memoir about Kelley watching her 4-year-old son, Henry, die of cancer and a theological reflection driven by that experience. She explores harmful explanations that Christian culture offers the brokenhearted, such as that Henry’s tumor was a blessing in disguise or God’s discipline or part of God’s plan. She offers an alternative to the traditional view of the book of Job and concludes that “God is battling, always battling, to bring good out of evil.” She encourages readers to wrestle with their picture of God, as she has done so well.
2. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders (Random House, 2013): This is a highly acclaimed collection by a writer many consider the best American short story writer writing now. This book, which I finally finished recently, won the 2013 Story Prize for short story collections and the inaugural (2014) Folio Prize for the best work of fiction from any country published in the UK that year. Saunders’ stories are often quirky yet heartfelt. He combines humor and pathos amid intriguing settings. He combines satire of American life with an optimistic worldview.
The title story here is masterful. A boy goes to a pond near his home on a cold December day and finds a jacket a man has left behind. Trying to retrieve it, he falls through the ice into the water. The man who left the jacket is there to commit suicide. Then he sees the boy. Saunders alternates between the two characters’ point of view with stream-of-consciousness writing. What’s most striking about Saunders’ writing is his language and the narrative voices he creates.
Toward the end of the story, the man from the pond remembers a time with his wife: “They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—“ Sounds like the gospel.
3. The BFG (PG): Now to films. Last week I saw The BFG, Steven Spielberg’s film based on a book by Roald Dahl. The story, set in England in an unnamed time, is about an orphan girl who is captured by a benevolent giant, whom she calls the “Big Friendly Giant” (or BFG). He takes her to Giant Country, where they must find a way to stop man-eating giants that are attacking humans. The outstanding British actor Mark Rylance, who won last year’s Oscar for best supporting actor in Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, makes the film work. And Dahl’s funny, creative language doesn’t hurt. Then there’s Spielberg’s flawless filmmaking, particularly the magical scenes of the BFG capturing dreams. The BFG did not perform at the box office nearly as well as Pixar’s Finding Dory, which is too bad, because it’s a better film.
4. The Decalogue: A few weeks back, I was talking with fellow film buff Ben Regier about The Decalogue, the 10-part Polish TV series directed by the great Krzysztof Kieślowski that came out in 1989. I loaned Ben my copy. Each of the hour-long stories stand alone and correspond—loosely, not literally—to the Ten Commandments, following the Roman Catholic order, which is different from the Protestant order. Most of the films are set in a large housing project in Warsaw, and a few of the characters know each other. Kieślowski, who also made the Three Colors trilogy: Red, White, Blue and The Double Life of Veronique, died in 1996. Film critic Robert Fulford called The Decalogue “the best dramatic work ever done specifically for television.” I would place it in my top 10 list of the best films ever made. Unfortunately, it’s not available for streaming, though Netflix has it on DVD.
5. Call the Midwife: Finally, a TV show. Call the Midwife is shown on PBS, which aired Season 5 this spring. The show chronicles the lives of a group of midwives living in East London in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The women live in a house for Anglican nuns (not all the midwives are nuns, however), so religion is a frequent topic and simply part of the setting. The show can feel sappy at times, but it’s also gritty and realistic. While many shows are punctuated by violence, pretty graphic births punctuate this show.
The setting is key. Music and dress mark the time period, but we also learn about emerging issues in pre- and neonatal care. For example, pain-relieving gas is first used in Season 2, and in Season 5, set in 1961, the birth control pill is legalized. Also this season, we witness the tragedy of the use of thalidomide to relieve morning sickness. Later, medical science determines that the drug causes severe birth defects. By then, many babies have been born and died—often left to die—because of this drug’s use. The show may seem feel-good, but it includes tragedy and a realistic look at people—mostly women—as they negotiate bringing life into a world where poverty persists. I’ll predict you’ll get hooked.
