“Okay, before getting too far into reading this, understand that I only read this book because it was required of me for a book club. I wouldn’t normally review something I felt this unkind towards because I would not finish it. Nor would I expect to like it.
Fair warning.
Redeeming Love is a part of the genre we like to call “Inspirational Fiction” where the word “Inspirational” is a more friendly and inclusive way to say “Jesus-y” or “religious” or, as I like to say it, “Jesus C fiction where the “C” stands for “Centric” AND “Christ.”
And in this case, I don’t mean that Jesus is an important figure in the characters’ lives or that their belief system informs their decisions. I mean that god literally speaks to the characters. In case you’re wondering, god’s words are differentiated by being in bold. On the plus, you can just flip through and still catch most of the god stuff. I kind of feel like god would have the graphic design sense to have his own font, but what do I know?
To briefly summarize, Angel is a prostitute, and Michael is pretty much the best guy ever who comes along and hears god’s voice telling him to marry Angel, which he does. They go back and forth a bit, she leaves him three times and bangs his brother, Paul, on the side of the road. A family traveling to Oregon comes across their land at one point, and Michael invites them to live on the land with them. They have children who Angel likes, and that brings ups the fact that Angel has undergone some sort of barroom hysterectomy, which apparently didn’t take because the epilogue explains that she inexplicably has kids anyway, Paul marries one of the cross-country travelers after he and Angel make peace, and all accept god as being The Man.
I can sort of understand the appeal of this book in some ways. It’s compulsively readable in the sense that you can read 100 pages in a sitting, easily. Lots of stuff happens, and there’s a pacing to it that keeps it all moving.
But aside from that, I really have a problem with a lot of what this books sees as love.
For starters, if there was a god who literally spoke to me and told me that a particular person was “the one” that would simplify things quite a bit. Seriously, if god used his god-to-brain telephone to let me know that someone crazy, Courtney Love let’s say, was the one, then I’d really have no choice but to pursue that person because nobody else would make me equally happy. I probably wouldn’t wait until a pimp beat the holy bejeezus out of her to make my move and ask her to marry me the way Michael did in the book, but I’m just saying the path is a little clearer-cut.
But life isn’t that easy. It’s really not, and perhaps Courtney Love is the one for me, but I don’t suspect that she is, and therefore I won’t be busting my ass to try and convince her that a Derk/Love wedding is the ultimate fulfillment of god’s plan. If it were, the good news is that we could at least all come together on the fact that good is crazy and has very bad taste in Fleetwood Mac covers.
One of the unfortunate, difficult things about love is that there will always be uncertainty. I’ve talked to people who have been with lots of partners, and they’re never sure. I’ve talked to people who married the only person they’ve ever dated, and there’s uncertainty there too. I’m not saying it’s the kind of uncertainty that causes infidelity or wandering or whatever, but part of loving one person exclusively is accepting a certain level of doubt and learning how to put that aside or work through it. Or spending a lot on flowers and tennis bracelets.
The one kind of person I’ve never talked to is the kind that says god literally told him or her, in an audible voice, who “the one” was.
So if god tells you directly that California’s hottest prostitute is the one, I would highly suggest getting a second opinion. St. Francis maybe? Is that a guy?
Now, I don’t know enough about the romance genre to say whether this is endemic within it, but I have seen my fair share of romantic comedies, and there is a sort of love narrative that I don’t approve of.
A lot of romcoms push the assumption that Person A can love Person B so much that it doesn’t really matter that Person B doesn’t love Person A. And in the romcom world, it is acceptable to pursue someone with a naked aggression that would never be acceptable in real life.
Imagine some of the things that people do in romcoms to show their love. If someone came sprinting through Manhattan traffic to catch you on the other side of the street, wouldn’t you question his sanity? If you caught a woman peeping into your house from a position in a high-up tree branch, wouldn’t you consider updating your security system to include some sort of lasers or robotic dogs? If Lloyd Dobler was playing a boombox outside your window, would that really change your feelings about him? (actually the correct answer to that one is “No” but only because you loved Lloyd Dobler immediately and always)
The point is, I don’t belive in loving someone so much that they eventually love you, and maybe some couples end up together because one person engaged in an untiring pursuit, but I would think it’s very rare that several rejections end with an equally shared love. Wearing someone out to the point that it’s easier to say Yes than No is not really the same as making them love you. It’ll do in a pinch, and if you’re a lot better at being annoying than charming it’s worth a shot, but overall it’s not the best plan.
Let’s talk about characters for a minute.
Michael, the main guy, couldn’t me more flat if he were digitally rendered for the Atari 2600. All this guy does is listen to god, and then forgive his wife for everything. Relationships have to be about forgiveness to some extent, but I don’t think you should forgive your wife for banging your brother on the side of the road for no apparent reason. Or your brother, for that matter (unless, as we discussed earlier, your brother happens to be Lloyd Dobler, in which case who can blame them?). I mean, if my brother banged my wife, I think this would warrant, bare minimum, a heated discussion over a dinner that I don’t even finish because I’m too busy being mad at my brother and wife equally.
There is somethig about this Michael character that we are supposed to see as very strong, but to me comes off as the worst kind of weak. His entire purpose in the book, the entire scope of his life, is putting up with a woman who takes a very long time to actually love him. He apparently has nothing in his life and is a simple, empty vessel waiting for the right woman to come along and not only make him complete, but be his Wizard of Oz and give him brains and a heart and whatever the hell else those other losers got.
This character is a bad example for men and women alike. Men should not strive to be like him because his forgiveness extends so far that it would make any real person extremely unhappy. Also, following his example means living a life that is devoid of purpose outside of having a romantic relationship, which means you are an empty, soulless person, and good luck attracting someone else if you have no interests, no passions, and nothing about yourself that you’ve built or cultivated.
He has no personality, nothing that sets him apart from other men other than he’s on the “good” side of the line that ALL characters in this book could be categorized by. Seriously, this really is like an Atari game in that you could easily divide the characters into two camps: good guys and bad guys.
Through the lens of Angel, we discover that there are two kinds of men in the world: sex-crazed maniac murderers, and the nicest guys ever who still only vaguely manage to suppress their sexual urges through a close relationship with god. Basically, all men in the book are tormented by their relationship with sex, and it’s all about whether or not they “give in.” Even with a spouse, there’s some sex that’s okay and some sex that’s not okay because it’s “giving in.”
What a terrible way to look at the world. I personally believe there are many men out there who have healthy relationships with sex. Lord knows I’m not one of them, as my internet browsing history could easily confirm, but I strongly believe that those men exist, and I also think there are men who struggle with sex without forcing their struggles on others. Sex or sexual desire can be something a man wrestles with a little without becoming a crazed sex maniac who bangs his brother’s wife on the side of the road. I’m really obsessed with that, in case you can’t tell.
The author doesn’t understand men at all. If you think the ideal man is an empty vessel waiting to be filled, then buy a blowup doll and whisper your prayers into it every night until he’s full. Then wish for him to be a real boy and see how far that gets you.
And what about Angel, the female lead?
Ah, the hooker with a heart of gold.
The idea of the hooker with a heart of gold is very odd to me because it makes some very unfair assumptions. First, why would we assume that someone who has sex for money does not have a good heart? Why would our default assumption be that this person is heartless and mean as opposed to having a good heart? Why is this the only profession that we hear this about? When someone says their husband works at a grocery store, they don’t throw in, “but he has a heart of gold.” I’ve never heard of a baker with a heart of gold. And flipside, if these gold-hearted hookers are such an anomoly, how come I never read stories about hookers with hearts of wet garbage, or hearts of heart meat that perform their functions adequately if a bit coldly?
I do have a great idea for a steampunk novel called Hooker with a Heart of Gold about…well, exactly what it sounds like. And somehow the mechanical heart gives her fuck powers. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I suspect the end involves her 40 years later living in a small cabin, the one bullet she stopped still lodged in her golden heart. If only she’d been able to stop the other…
Anyway, I thought I would have more to say about Angel, but she’s just as empty as Michael. She’s empty in a different way in that she seems like a self-contained unit piloting her way through the novel, going whichever way she is steered by the various characters. At least she had a career of sorts so she wasn’t totally empty. And I didn’t mean that as a hooker pun, but once you start denying hooker puns you’ve already kind of lost the battle.
The most redemptive part of the book is the idea that Michael is constantly forgiving Angel for her past. I suppose that’s a somewhat enlightened view of things, and I wouldn’t expect that many men of god living during the gold rush would be too excited at the prospect of making a hooker into a wife. Warts and all. LOTS of warts and all.
But, the book loses touch with reality because it’s not about recognizing the past as something that has shaped a person into the person you love today. It’s about getting over the past, hitting the reset button and starting a new life, which doesn’t even work in the book because everything is thrown into total disarray everytime the past comes up, which it certainly will.
As an adult, you do have to reconcile with the past, both your own and your partner’s. You have to recognize that the past shaped the person you’re with today, and that’s the person you love, so for better or worse things have sort of worked out.
What the book doesn’t make clear is that you also have to balance the past. Yes, I think it’s good that Michael can make peace with the fact that his wife was a hooker. I mean, it’s a little easier to do and really doesn’t bring up a lot of the core issues because she had no choice in the matter, but nevertheless, he didn’t seem terribly judgmental of her past. But if your wife brings up the fact that she had sex with her own father in a revenge scenario, that’s a huge red flag. If someone is angry enough at their own father, or confused enough or whatever, that when he walks into a brothel she has sex with him, it doesn’t really matter how cool YOU are with her past because she obviously still has some stuff to work out there.
I don’t know what kind of love people of the world are looking for. But I hope this isn’t it. If you are expecting this story to match your own, I am very sad for you because I don’t have very high hopes. I wish you the best of luck, however, and try not to fuck anyone’s brother or your own father and you’ll already be going down a better path.”