Book Review: The Gospel of Orla

 By Eoghan Walls

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: The Novel Neighbor, Saint Louis. 

• Why I bought this book: Jesus returns to a young Irish girl living in England.

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    Orla is an unhappy 14-year-old. Her mother is dead. Her father is an alcoholic. School sucks. Her teachers suck. Her friends have deserted her. Her cat dies.

 

   Then, as she's planning to run away from home, she meets Jesus.

    Seriously. Not a pretend Jesus, but the Son of God, back to preach his father's word. But he's unsure how to go about it. 

    He's a little confused, roaming around parts of England, unsure of how he got there. He remembers being in Israel, dying, and lying around under the sea for a while. He knows the message he wants to spread -- peace and love and kindness -- and he thinks people will just follow him intuitively.

    He's unsure when he is. He hasn't heard of the internet, but becomes fascinated when Orla starts to teach him about wifi and Google maps. Cell phones are a mystery: He knows about phones, but thinks they are attached to walls. Personal hygiene is a concern -- he smells pretty rank, Orla says, and he thinks running around wearing only a blanket is an OK thing.

    Orla's a bit dubious about him, until she sees him bring a dead animal back to life. Then she decides she can use him to help her run away, and in return can teach him a thing or two about reaching out to people in modern times and on social media.

    The story ranges from Orla's plans, to her family life, to her days in school, to flashbacks about how her life got to the mess it is. Her tales of her time with Jesus are written in the style of the gospels, but with the voice of a teenage girl.  

 

    Walls is an Irish poet, and the prose often sings with a lyrical lilt. This is his first novel, and it's well done, with a fine story to go along with Orla's unique voice.

Book Review: Church of Marvels

 The Church of Marvels, by Leslie Parry

   

    I loved the story, just not the way it was told.

    Set in Lower Manhattan and Coney Island at the tail end of the 19th century, Church of Marvels tells of a family of carnival workers, and then of an abandoned baby recovered by an underground prize fighter, along with an undertaker who regularly visits the city's opium dens. 

    I think.

    It's all very confusing. The novel drifts from one tale to another, abruptly changing characters, locales, and narrators. It's tough to keep up with the stories when you forget who is who. You spend too much effort trying to figure out how each person relates to the others in time and narrations. 

    And whatever you think is happening, or has happened, is probably wrong.

    Ostensibly, the tale circles around Belle and Odile Church, who with their mother, Friendship, perform at and run a carnival sideshow -- the Church of Marvels of the title -- on Coney Island. Alternatively, we are introduced to Sylvan Threadgill, who cleans out privies on the Lower East Side, and somehow finds a baby girl in a dark alley. There is Alphie, a makeup girl and sometimes prostitute -- who turns out to be one of the most intriguing characters in the book -- whom we first meet while she is babbling a confusing, perhaps fantastical, story while trapped in an insane asylum.

    Other characters come in and out, and it takes a while to figure out who everyone is and how they relate to each other. But just as you think you are piercing together the tale, it jumps off into another place with new people we haven't met before.

    Confusing, yes. But it is well written, and it is nicely wrapped up in the end by one of the characters who explains pretty much everything. I just wish more of the book was as expositive.