A limited number of advance reader copies of Clear Winter Nights have been circulating around the country, and there are some blog reviews popping up here and there. Already, I’m beginning to see how different the feedback / review process is going to be this time around, particularly when compared to the non-fiction books I’ve published up until now.
I don’t plan on linking to all the reviews that come out, but I thought it might be interesting to show how people respond to a book doing both theology and story. Here are some of the early reviews and how they differ from non-fiction.
1. Fiction reviewers respond to the emotional resonance of the characters, not just the persuasiveness of their conversations.
With non-fiction books, reviewers focus on the presentation and the persuasiveness of the main ideas. With Clear Winter Nights, readers wind up talking about the characters, not just their ideas.
Take Johann Vanderbijl’s review, for example. He focuses on his connection with the grandfather in the story:
No work of fiction has ever touched me this deeply. I often had to stop to think, meditate, pray, and search my own heart. Then this: “In those quiet moments, when the stillness of the house set in and the winter evening sent a chill through everything, Gil cried out to God, asking for strength and wisdom. From his heart poured his own regrets, his failures as a father, his decisions that had caused unintended pain.” At this point, I had to put the book down.
Later on, he does mention the apologetic purpose of the story, but almost as a footnote:
This review is very personal because that is the impact the book had on me as I read it… At the same time, this very true to life book serves as an apologetic to those who share Chris’ hurts, anger, doubts, and fears.
For Johann, the characters are the book. The conversations are secondary. Perhaps that’s why in Patricia Janes’ review, her negative reaction to one character made it harder to appreciate the rest of the book. She describes one of the characters as naive and clingy and then writes:
I really dislike how the author equates Chris’ uncertainty about marriage with his uncertainty about faith. This artificial dilemma is ridiculous and I found it unsettling that the author equates these two things as on the same level.
Actually, the purpose of the Chris/Ashley dilemma is to demonstrate that conversion, rededication, and our journey of faith happen in community amidst a nexus of relationships. We are never in a vacuum dealing with the claims of Christ on our own, but are always interacting with and reflecting on how these decisions are impacted by and will further influence our friendships. In the rest of her review, Patricia found aspects to be commended (caution – Spoiler Alerts in the review!), but it’s clear that her disapproval of the main character’s relationship choices colored the rest of the book for her.
This kind of reaction to character is new for me. It makes reading the reviews exciting. I keep wondering, What will people think about Chris? How will they respond to Gil? It’s not the conversations that make the characters, but the characters that make the conversations.
2. Regular readers of non-fiction recognize the apologetic value of teaching theology through story.
Virginia Garrett’s review focuses on how the story provides food for thought for Christians and non-Christians (and provides a photo of the one of the pages!). She writes:
[This book] spoke to so many issues people have today. Many of the very issues people claim to have with Christianity are dealt with and answered in this book. If you or someone you know, Christian or not, are questioning beliefs, this would be a great book to read.
Michael Kelley also reviewed the book. He doesn’t give too much away, so you don’t have to worry about spoilers. Michael gets the “theology in story” part, and why it matters to be up front about the purpose.
I remember several years ago when The Shack came out and there was a good deal of controversy in trying to diagnose what the author was or was not trying to say in its pages. One of the defenses of the book was that it was a story, and therefore could not be treated as a strict commentary on life and God. The problem with that approach is that everything, whether we recognize it or not, is really about theology at its core. Every interaction, every response, every question at its core level reveals what we do or do not believe to be true about God. What Trevin has done here is simply dispense with the pleasantries and say, from the outset, that he is teaching through this story.
Along the same lines, Kyle McDanell sees the value in teaching through story:
Instead of confusing the faith, like The Shack, or tearing it down, like in A New Kind of Christian, Wax articulates it and builds it up. Wax acknowledges the real and present threats facing the church and uses Chris as the voice for them. But instead of ignoring or belittling them, he has Gil confront them all the while articulating why the gospel is more freeing.
3. Regular readers of theology understand the difficulty of crossing literary genres.
My friend and colleague, Matt Capps, admits he’s not much of a fiction reader, but he has a keen understanding of how difficult it is, as an author, to try a different genre. He writes:
Offering a work of fiction to the public puts an author in new territory beyond a change of literary genre. In non-fiction a writer has the privilege of shoring up his or her arguments with evidence, his or her points with the thoughts of other thinkers. Fiction pushes an author into a much more vulnerable position. Trevin has not only personally crafted this entire story, but also intimately created each character, and shaped their thoughts and actions. A fiction novel is a work of art. And because it is a work of art the writer becomes susceptible to criticism on many levels. In my opinion this makes Clear Winter Nights Trevin’s most personal venture yet.
Exactly. The personal attachment to this book is stronger than anything else I’ve written, and yet I’ve found I’m less defensive about this book and more interested in how people respond to the characters.
