Book Addiction

Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith  by Jon Krakauer

From the back cover -

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits.  He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy.  Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God.

At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl.  Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith.  Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

My thoughts -

I found this book to be fascinating.  I’ve done some research in the past about Mormon Fundamentalism, and it has always left me sad, scared, and mostly angry.  Pure and simply, it is a disgustingly patriarchal culture of chronic misogyny and horrific physical, sexual, and emotional abuse to women and children.  The God I subscribe to does not tolerate any of the above behaviors, and it makes me very sad to read about people who are raised their entire lives thinking that this is the way God thinks.  So because of that, this is a difficult book to read; there is a lot of information and anecdotes by practicing Mormons that made me sick to my stomach and VERY angry. 

Beyond that, the book is full of the history of Mormonism (the world’s fastest growing religion, and the only religion that was created and developed in the modern world) and the differences between the Fundamentalist group and the non-Fundamentalist group.  While that section of the book was interesting, truthfully I was bored in parts and I ended up skipping pages here and there.  It definitely added to the story, but I am just not a person that enjoys reading about wars and battles, and there were at least two chapters fully devoted to the battles that the earliest Mormons fought to keep their religious freedoms alive.  Some people may love those sections, while personally they were my least favorite parts.

And interspersed with all of this is the story of the Lafferty brothers’ brutal murder of one innocent woman and her even more innocent baby.  The parts devoted to this read very much like In Cold Blood  (which I read not too long ago, check out my review) - reading like a novel but a completely true story.  Krakauer even spent a good chunk of the book examining the killers’ mindsets and upbringings, very similar to what Capote did in his true murder account.  I was definitely kept interested in the Lafferty brothers’ story, but just like earlier in the book, I felt completely sad and disgusted by their lives and by their thought process. 

Under The Banner of Heaven  is a very good book, meticulously researched and very well thought out, but it is also very, very sad and may make you want to punch a hole in your wall.  So I’d recommend reading it, but I’d also recommend doing so with caution.

8 stars.

The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff

From booklist -

One of the world’s oldest stories becomes new again in the hands of a 70-year-old first-time novelist. The setting is a lush, freshly formed Garden of Eden, where Eve is just awakening to the all-wise, feathered Serpent who is her guardian. Nearby, Adam is being raised by a cranky, white-bearded God intent on seeing that His creations adhere to His vision. But the Serpent has something far different in mind for its charge, and under the Serpent’s painstaking tutelage, Eve begins to think and to question. Journeys with the Serpent outside the garden give Eve a breadth and depth of knowledge forbidden to Adam, who learns to fear a god who is both capricious and demanding.

Despite the Serpent’s strenuous objections, God insists that Adam and Eve mate, and the event turns into a rape, for which Eve is loath to forgive either God or Adam. Only later, when the Serpent changes form, becomes a man, and makes love to Eve, is she prepared to accept her central role as the mother of humankind. Even then, however, she’s still not ready to forgo her independence. Although the Serpent explains all the hardship that will come to her if she eats the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, she accepts the challenge to become a fully realized human, as does Adam, who, though lacking Eve’s strength, also yearns to be his own person.

My thoughts -

This book was very interesting to me.  Aidinoff took the story of Adam and Eve and completely turned it on its head.  In this version, Eve is the protagonist and we see how the events may have played out if it were Eve who wrote the Bible.  In Aidinoff’s story, Eve, who is creative, smart, and questions absolutely everything, is raised by the Serpant, who instead of the Devil, is actually the voice of reason, conscience, logic, and a wonderful teacher and friend to Eve.  God, on the other hand, is extremely pretentious, full of himself, requires absolute obedience and adoration, and is pretty terrifying to both Eve and Adam.  Last, we have Adam, who is depicted as a simple pawn in God’s grand plan, lazy and not too intelligent, a dreamer who simply goes along with whatever God tells him to do (including raping Eve).  In this story, the Serpent spends most of its time teaching Eve about why she is in the Garden, what her role is in the world, and about what is outside the Garden’s boundaries.  He even takes her exploring outside so she can see for herself just what is out there should she ever venture out on her own time (even though God does not ever plan on her leaving).  And when the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil appears in the Garden, it is the Serpent who carefully explains to Adam and Eve exactly what will happen to them if they eat an apple from it.  Ultimately, both Adam and Eve decide that they crave the independence and freedom that will result from eating the apple.  None of them imagine the crushing punishments God ultimately inflicts upon them for having eaten the apple (you know the whole pain in childbirth, difficult life, shame, women are subordinate to their husbands stuff).  Although Adam and Eve both considered the pros and cons to eating the apple and gaining the freedom they so desired, as written in the Bible, Eve is blamed for having coerced Adam into doing it, and the Serpent is blamed for having coerced Eve (thus, God turning him into the Devil), and they are all banished from the Garden forever.

I actually did enjoy this book.  I just found it so interesting to think of this whole entire story in such a different way.  Of course, nobody will ever know what really happened in the Garden of Eden, but it was definitely fun to think of things from a different perspective than what is in the Bible.  I loved how the story was told from Eve’s perspective, and how she defied the expectations held for her, had a mind of her own, and ultimately chose to be punished so that for the rest of time, people would be able to have free will.  In the author notes in the back, Aidinoff claims that this is not a feminist book, but I think she’s kind of in denial about that.  This is a radical book, especially to those of us that (well in my case, somewhat roughly) believe in the Bible and God’s word and all of that.  It is a huge feminist statement to say that perhaps things didn’t go quite as stated in Genesis and perhaps Eve isn’t the horrible sinner she was made out to be, especially in this patriarchical society that we live in, and especially for Christianity, which is even more centered in patriarchy than the general culture.

I can’t say that I loved the writing style, I got bored at times, and I do think the book was a little lengthy for its content (400 pages).  But I still am a big fan, and I’d recommend this to anyone looking for something a little different to read. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Left To Tell:  Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin

From book jacket:

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished.  But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide.  Her family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.  Miraculously, Immaculee survived the slaughter.  For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s home while hundreds of machete-waving killers hunted for them.  It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God.  She emerged from the bathroom hideout having truly discovered the meaning of unconditional love - a love so strong that she was able to seek out and forgive her family’s killers. 

My thoughts:

My grandma loaned me this book on Saturday evening and I finished it last night… clearly, I couldn’t put it down.  Immaculee’s story is absolutely heartbreaking but ultimately one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever read.  The things this girl has been through, words simply cannot describe (although Immaculee did a pretty good job describing them in her book, in full disgustingly bloody detail).  Reading this book made me feel very, very lucky to be alive and to know that this type of terror is not something that I’ll probably ever have to experience.  Left to Tell is very religion-focused because, like the summary says, that is how she got through those terrifying 3 months in a cramped bathroom, unable to move, speak, shower, or really even eat.  If you are turned off by the God centricity of this book, don’t be.  You can still feel just as inspired by this story if you don’t belive in her God, it’s truly a worthwile read no matter what your religious beliefs.  The book goes into a little detail about why the genocide in Rwanda occured; it’s pretty rudimentary but it will suffice if you are not informed of the causes already (of course, I encourage anyone to read up on the genocide who is not familiar with what happened anyway).  The main thing that struck me as so unbelievable (in a good way) was Immaculee’s incredible power to forgive.  She lamented many times throughout the book how she could not believe that powerful countries such as the United States, and organizations such as the UN, were not stepping in to stop the genocide until it had gone on for over three months and more than a million people had been killed; anyone in that situation would feel just as angry and resentful toward these large and powerful governments that did nothing to help Rwandans.  But as soon as the genocide was over, she went to work for the UN, and eventually moved to the United States with her American-born husband… if that’s not forgiveness, I don’t know what is.  The biggest thing that she forgave, however, was the killing of her family.  She said she relied on God to help her with this, and he put love and grace in her heart so that when she (many years down the road) came face to face with the man who killed her parents, she was able to tell him that she forgave him and move on with her life.  And move on she did - she is now a successful professional at the UN, she has created a foundation to help survivors of the genocide, and she has a wonderful husband, two kids, and a happy life.  This book will really touch your heart and inspire you; I encourage everyone to pick it up.

Rating of the book: 95 out of 100.