A Collection of Collections, Part II

Say You're One of Them, Uwem Akpan

This collection of short stories and novellas by Nigerian writer and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan is a stark and relentless look at the issues of poverty, disease and sectarian violence in modern Africa. Akpan has chosen as his central characters (protagonist smacks of too much agency) in these five pieces children caught up in genocidal violence, child slavery, poverty, prostitution - children who have seen too much to be wholly innocent, though they may not always comprehend the worst that can still befall them. Painful to read, and haunting.



Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, Vincent Lam

A suite of interlocking short stories that follow the work and personal lives of four doctors, Lam's debut work is enriched by his own experiences as a physician. The medical aspects of these stories are familiar from countless television shows, but what Lam excels at is showing us the souls of both doctors and patients, the damage caused by both the powerlessness of being ill or injured, and the power of being the only one who might be able to help.



Peter S. Beagle, Sleight of Hand

Beagle is a master of the short story form. And a master of the fantasy genre. But you all knew that, right?

This is a collection of new and previously published stories. Some of them are merely good; the rest are hauntingly wonderful. My favourites were: Vanishing, a different kind of ghost story set on the Berlin Wall; Dirae, about a warrior-protector of the weak whose strength comes at a tragic price; the Rabbi's Hobby, about the quest of a rabbi and his young bar mitzvah student to discover the person behind an unusual cover model's face; and Children of the Shark God, about two youths who set out to find their mysterious father. In varied and sometimes surprising ways, the stories in this collection offer meditations on family and friendship, courage, loyalty and love, as told by a master of the art of portraying the human soul.

Barbara R. Rossing: The Rapture Exposed

We live in millennial times - at least those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar - and it's not that much of a stretch to think that this, and the general state of instability in global politics and society have had something to do with the growth industry that is the Christian myth of The Rapture. Books, movies, ranting television evangelists, and even American politicians with the power to start wars have been part of this strange cultural phenomenon.

Barbara R. Rossing’s The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, takes on The Rapture mythology from two perspectives: first she traces the history of the idea that the chosen of God will be taken up alive and in the flesh into heaven while everyone else suffers through tribulations of immense proportion and scope; and second, she delivers a thorough and scholarly critique of the theology of the Rapture from the standpoint of a mainstream Christian with a sound understanding of the Biblical texts and their place in the historical and religious context of their times.

As one reviewer notes,

The strength, one of many, of Rossing’s text is that she takes what has become known as premillenial dispensationalism and surgically dismantles it due to its lack of any significant scriptural foundation. Rossing takes a longer view of Scripture than rapture proponents…that is, she seems to be looking at how God has worked throughout Scripture rather than simply piecing together a handful of verses, many out of context, to create a much-anticipated time-line of rapture, destruction, and death. Along the way, she highlights criticisms of this theological worldview form all camps, liberal and conservative, evangelical and mainline, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, and the list of opponents goes on and on. (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/poptheology/2009/12/the-rapture-exposed/)

Finally, Rossing looks at the potential for violence and war in the kind of mindset that reads current events as milestones on the road to the Second Coming, and believes that the world must suffer in flames before that event can occur.