Lornographic Material

The thing about literary fiction, Christian or otherwise, is you have to love the language. To be done right, an author needs to value things like sentence structure, placement of words, and economy of prose. In WHEN CRICKETS CRY, Charles Martin gets two out of three right. His sentence structure is perfect. He manages to build scenes so startlingly real that you can remember them as if they're your own memories. His word placement is brilliant. You can tell he's honed this story down to the most beautiful couplings of words that then copulate and birth vivid visuals. But he's far from sparse. I'm a firm believer that the fewer words used to describe something the better the end result. Especially in literary fiction. Now, this might seem the exact opposite of what most people think of when considering literary fiction (most believing that the genre, by definition, is verbose) but I disagree. I think wordy authors only prove their lack of skill. If it takes you four sentences to describe someone throwing a door open, you've failed at your task. Here, and only here, does Martin fail. Charles Martin likes listing stuff. He wants you to know every single detail down to the brand of every appliance/tool/toiletry used by his characters. Although, sometimes, the brand is all he tells you and you have to guess at what the fuck he's talking about (yes, even though this is a review of Christian fiction, I still dropped the f-bomb, because Hey-Zeus died for my right to be offensive!). The book is bogged down by paragraphs that resemble brick walls slathered with text which have no purpose other than reciting the Sears catalog's chapter on boat-building hardware, or the most boring bits of the New England Journal of Medicine. The author didn't bother with any flair or fireworks during these sections, which led me to believe he might have been copying directly from GRAY'S ANATOMY or BLACK & DECKER DO DALLAS. The prose farted along or was completely none-existent during every list, was basically stripped down to the most commonplace verbiage. Boo! Hiss! *tosses tomatoes at author* This is only so glaringly obvious because the rest of the book is gorgeous. Seriously, I wanted to have this book's babies.

What Martin does best is scene building. He stacks the beginning of every chapter with enough detail so that the hops back and forth in time are not jarring or confusing. Then he lets his characters exist in that space. The dialogue is some of the best I've ever read. These people talk like real people. They react like real people. They love and hurt and breathe and walk like real people. If it wasn't for that, I probably would have deleted this book from my Kindle. Which brings me to...

The fact that I'm an atheist. I'm not even agnostic. I firmly and unflinchingly believe that there is no creator, no invisible man in the sky who grants wishes, and sends people to a lake of fire for not listening to him like some amateur parental figure. Honestly, to me, God and Santa are made of the same thing: fairy dust and children's wishes. That alone should speak volumes as to the quality of this book. Charles Martin makes it very clear, from the first page on, that this book is about the power of God and blah, blah, blah, other religious stuff and things. But, even though I believe in Martin's god as much as I believe in Tolkien's hobbits, I enjoyed this book for the journey, much like I did while reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Martin didn't make my belief a necessity, and for that, I applaud him. 

SPOILERS OF WAR! (SPOILERS AHEAD)

The ending was... meh. This is personal preference over something that the author did wrong. I do believe that, had Annie died and Reese been able to get back on the horse, so to speak, even though he couldn't save her, the story would have benefited far more. If anything would have proven the strength of the author's faith, that would have. In my eyes, having him save Annie was far too convenient and easy an ending. This is why I don't like happy endings. There's no risk involved, and, for the most part, everyone expects them. In the end, Reese seemed weak because he had to save Annie to redeem himself instead of focusing on his faith to bounce back. 

THE END OF SPOILERS!

In summation, this book didn't convert me to Christianity, nor did it try, and I commend Martin for that. He celebrated his faith without being preachy. The author can get long winded where product listings are concerned, but this book is mostly smexy (smart and sexy) prose that makes one want to lick the pages. I kid, I kid... but, seriously, schnozzberries. If you can stomach religiously devout characters and happy endings, read this book for the journey, not the destination.