Sweet Heaven When I Die

June 27, 2011
In a wide-ranging collection of personal essays, Sharlet (The Family) provides various takes on faith in the form of profiles of a diverse group among the faithful and the faithless including a politician, a philosopher, an anarchist, a Yiddish novelist, and a group of evangelical teens. One essay follows a New Age healer who makes good business "cleansing" homes of bad vibes for a surprising number of New York City's real estate brokerages ("Sondra's healing services were no sillier or more profound than the idea that by dunking yourself in water, you experience death and resurrection"). The author sometimes slips into easy armchair philosophizing, but the sketches themselves offer nuanced and genuinely touching portraits of people from all walks, giving impressions of evangelicals in the throes of doubt as well as skeptics who want badly to be religious, but can't bring themselves to it. Although the essays have the theme of faith in common, the diversity of their individual subjects is less a virtue than a lack of focus that may disappoint some readers, while others may be interested in working to discern, or invent for themselves, the points of intersection among these essays.

September 15, 2011

Individually provocative but collectively a bit frustrating, this loosely linked gathering of essays, many originally published in magazines, explores faith--or more precisely, it explores, in various intimate, keenly observed ways, human responses to the human condition. Sharlet (The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power) writes about Cornel West, Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb, and evangelist to teens Ron Luce, but also about private citizens and Sharlet's friends in the throes of loss or crisis. He discusses slain activist Brad Will as mourned by his conservative parents, New Age spirituality through the lens of real estate "cleanser" Sondra Shaye, and, curiously, Clear Channel's appropriation of radio and live concert culture. VERDICT No preface is included, so unless a reader starts with the introspective final essay and works backward, the subtitle is the only indication of the collection's theme. Several essays seem only very tenuously connected to the subject of religious belief and unbelief. But each is compelling on its own and evocatively written, if part of a highly eclectic collection. A good choice for connoisseurs of the personal essay. [See Prepub Alert, 2/7/11.]--Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011

A disjointed collection of essays profiling a diverse set of faith-based leaders across the American landscape.

In his latest book, Sharlet (C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, 2010, etc.) returns to religion but casts a wider net, peering into the nooks and crannies of modern American faiths largely by examining their leaders. Writing with a casual, conversational hand—almost as if transcribing an episode of This American Life—the author chronicles his travels around the country. On his journeys, he visited the East Texas Honor Academy led by charismatic minister Ron Luce, who has spearheaded a virulent, nationwide fundamentalist Christian youth crusade. He mourned with the parents of anarchist Brad Will, who was gunned down for videotaping riots in Oaxaca, attended a New Age healing convention with a Kabbalist and Reiki master and waxed philosophical on Kierkegaard and W.E.B. Du Bois with Cornel West (seen by many as a prophet in his own right). In the first, perhaps most personal essay, Sharlet discusses his visit to his college girlfriend, Molly, in the small Colorado town where she lives with her preacher husband and serves as a gun-toting, horse-riding, morally bound district attorney. The author had spent a summer in Colorado with Molly in college, and his return there makes stark the contrast between the liberal path that he took and the Christian, conservative one that she did. Sharlet has plenty of reason for confusion—his parents divorced early, and he was raised largely by his Christian mother, until she died when he was 16 and his Jewish father took over. But while he interjects some personal questions into his essays, they seem largely incidental and don't effectively bind the shorter pieces.

Sharlet admits that many of these essays were born from research for other books, and that's how they read: well-written but disconnected parts of several larger wholes.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2011

A contributing editor to Rolling Stone and best-selling author of The Family and C Street, about fundamentalist influence in America (and beyond), Sharlet here profiles the fringiest of fringe beliefs to give us a broader view of faith in this country. Evangelists, banjo players, urban anarchists, the Mind Body, Spirit Expo--they're all here in what should be a fascinating read.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011
Sharlet seems to be a man drawn to extremes. In C Street (2010) and The Family (2008), he presented fascinating, well-researched expos's of Christian fundamentalism in the halls of American political power. In this book, he moves away from the clearly defined agendas of the fundamentalist elite in Washington, D.C., to examine the fringes of spiritual and religious belief throughout the country. His observations on faith in all its guises are peppered throughout 13 essays that meander from the beautiful Colorado mountainside to the prophets and pharisees of Philadelphia's indie-music scene to the brilliant, jazz-inspired philosophy of Cornel West. Sharlet avoids any obvious connections between one essay and another and uses his gift for clear, resonant prose to slowly unravel each subject rather than rush straight to the point. While this may frustrate more impatient readers, those willing to follow Sharlet into the proverbial desert on his quest for faith will find this rich and intriguing reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)