REVIEWS AND READER COMMENTS

SEEKING THE DIVINE SPARK: A SATIRE IN THE STYLE OF EVELYN WAUGH

Amazon 5-Star REVIEW of first version
‘Could not put it down’. We often hear people say that about a book. Wilson’s book really is a book I could not put down, in fact I stayed up well into the next morning reading it. This is great satire. The names Wilson gives people says a lot about them and their professions and/or way of life. Built around the hysterical need to crush the Catholic Church in a blanket condemnation of everything Catholic, I mean everything Catholic, the big bug-a-boo is a perverted priest who has molested minor boys. Criminal and morally repugnant as such actions are, the author has his characters being seen as hypocrites of the first order in their own morally bankrupt lives. The ending seemed a bit abrupt, but the tension the book had generated made it a rather welcome release to have it finally come to an end that was not too unrealistic but which continued the satire to its logical conclusion. A marvellous work of literature of the satire sort.

*****

I liked [your novel].  I got caught up in the characters and situations and wondered how things would turn out.  I think you manage the scenes very well and often bring them to a subtle yet provocative conclusion.  You also make the scenes work together very well.  And you write well, so I think you should certainly be able to make a career as a writer…Your Norm Mudlord (the names are good) reminded me of our Rush Limbaugh, and I liked how you had the characters criticize others while engaging in the very behaviour they were criticizing.  That’s another example of subtlety, and something you can build on…
In an email: Dr John Wilson (no relation), Former Associate Professor of English, English Department, Lock Haven University, Pennsylvania, USA, and former Editor of the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter: http://evelynwaughsociety.org/

*****

While [the story] depicts a people comfortable in their sin, there is something beneath the surface which communicates to the reader how very disordered the whole sequence of events is. It is in the absurd hypocrisy and the seeming inability of the various characters to connect the dots, as it were, between their own failings and the supposed failings of the Church that resounds with a message wholly at variance with the gross abominations perpetrated within. And this is—I should think—the goal of satire, to render absurd that which takes itself so very seriously … the author certainly achieves this …’ Adam Mitchell Bond, Bradford, Pennsylvania USA.

*****

The disordered thinking of society with regard to sexual morality is well portrayed and the utter hypocrisy of the media cannot be missed. When confronted with honesty, sincerity and goodness in the form of people such as Father Champion they seek not only to assassinate their characters but punish them severely and eliminate them entirely from society – as if their message will go away.
Reader comment in email to author: Gai Smith, Blaxland NSW