The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance [Hardcover]

Benjamin Anastas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2001

Adultery, real estate, and religion collide in this new novel from "a bitterly funny" (The New Yorker) writer.

Reverend Thomas Mosher, the young black pastor of the Pilgrims' Congregational Church in W---, Massachusetts, has vanished without a trace. Does the rumored affair between Thomas and Bethany Caruso, unhappily married mother of two, provide an explanation? Did Thomas's esoteric final sermon, "The Shapes of Love" (positing that God is an "infinite sphere"), contain a clue? Did the overwhelmingly white, liberal parishioners drive him away?

Bethany and the rest of the congregants grapple with the ensuing crises. Chief among them: Artemesia Angelis, an unusually pious housewife with a fixation on the Puritan "heretic" Anne Hutchinson; Margaret Howard, matriarch of a thriving real estate business; and Bobby Caruso, Bethany's husband, whose lack of interest in church affairs is matched only by his wife's disdain for Bobby's "fornicatorium," a hapless, last-ditch attempt to save their marriage. "Where do people come from?" Bethany asks at the novel's end. "And where do they go? Who makes this world unbearable?" Benjamin Anastas's bold, blisteringly funny, and ultimately haunting satire of modern materialism marks the emergence of an astonishing talent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Writing with the same panache he brought to his clever first novel, An Underachiever's Diary, Anastas again proves himself a smart literary voice. Punctuated by breathless, run-on sentences that impart a hectic feel to the narrative, this is a subversive and funny satire of American materialism and spirituality. Just after Easter Sunday, Rev. Thomas Mosher goes missing from his Congregational church in a Boston suburb. The circumstances were unusual before he disappeared: Thomas is black and ministers to a white congregation that has no idea of the loneliness and self-doubt that plagues their pastor. One faction of the church council, led by hard-driving realtor Martha Howard, thinks that Thomas's abrupt departure may be traced to an affair with married Bethany Caruso. Then again, Martha is a bitter woman, disappointed in her feckless husband and drug-dealing college dropout son. After finding a randy letter tucked inside the parsonage's back door, Martha feels vindicated and takes action. Most of the narrative, however, belongs to Bethany. Highly nervous, Zoloft-dependent, spiritually bereft, yet a loving mother to her two young children, she is an oddly compelling heroine. Returning to the church, she hopes, will satisfy her vague longings what she doesn't guess is that she will be called upon to succor Thomas. In depicting Thomas's inner thoughts a murky m‚lange of sexual longing, cynicism, jealousy and ugly self-justification Anastas bluntly conveys the poignancy of unfulfilled lives. His unsparing take on the emptiness and desperation of a materialist society sparkles with dry wit and a generous understanding of human complexities. (May)Forecast: The cult following that Grand Street editor Anastas established with his first book should increase with this adroit and urbane novel. If he is as articulate as his fiction suggests, he will have a good run on talk shows.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This rueful second novel by Anastas (An Underachiever's Diary) opens with a mystery: the Rev. Thomas Mosher of the Pilgrims' Congregational Church in suburban Massachusetts has disappeared. Was the young black man driven out by his pseudo-liberal white congregants, or was he fleeing the private sorrow he seemed to carry around with him? Or was the rumored affair between him and gorgeous-but-married Bethany Caruso too much for his conscience? The congregants soon grow uneasy, especially Bethany, whom, we learn quickly, really was carrying on a torrid affair with her spiritual adviser. The novel gently mixes wry observations on Mosher's mostly sanctimonious flock the unbearable Margarent Howard is particularly well drawn with a darker story of wrecked hopes and irreconcilable desires. In the end, the story is more Bethany's than Thomas's as she learns to accept his loss and her responsibilities. It's frustrating, though, that we never really learn what went wrong for Thomas; his disappearance starts to feel like a device, and some of the targets Anastos hits religious smugness, frustrated spouses seem a little too easy. Still, this is a thoughtful enough read; for larger collections.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; 1st edition (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374152144
• ISBN-13: 978-0374152147
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,463,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Benjamin Anastas's first novel, "An Underachiever's Diary," has been called the "funniest, most underappreciated book of the 1990s." His second novel, "The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance," was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His prize-winning short fiction has been published in The Paris Review, GQ, The Yale Review and Story magazine. A former editor at the literary magazine Grand Street and interim director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, Anastas has more recently taught writing at Columbia University and contributed articles to Bookforum, the New York Times Magazine, Men's Vogue and Granta.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Another Tale of the 5:23 from Manhattan, July 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance (Hardcover)

A few drops of John Cheever. A jigger of John Updike. Top up the glass with satire. And what you have is a brew all Anastas's own. Yes, we're back in the New England of Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau. And we're reading about a strange mixture of adultery and church. "The Scarlet Letter?" Hardly. "The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance" moves from a tongue-in-cheek look at yuppie lifestyles off Rte. 128 to a sensitive portrait of a woman who would seem, 2001-style, to Have It All. This is a fascinating and, I think, original look at suburbia today.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and Hilarious at the Same Time, August 30, 2001

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance (Hardcover)

The Faithful Narrative is disturbingly on-target depiction of some of the spiritual soul-lessness of suburban, upper middle class life done in a satirically hilarious manner that makes the novel a terrific read. The novel is really a look at suburban life in it's most unflattering light. I enjoyed the novel--it can be very funny and on target at times. It reminded me a bit of American Beauty in that both satirically strip all the sugarcoating off of suburban life. The novel is just one side of suburbia, and if you don't mind a little sarcasm and satire, I highly recommend this novel.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A prodigious talent tests the limits., July 17, 2001

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance (Hardcover)

If you are already a member of the Anastas cult, you will love this book! And if you don't know Anastas but enjoy novels which are stylistically unique, you will find yourself intrigued. Anastas, with no pretense of scholarly reticence (some might even say he shows off), creates syntactical fireworks within fireworks here, sentences which take on lives of their own, and mountains of very specific images in his descriptions. He applies a verbal machete to the misguided aspirations and the pretentions of suburbia, from SUV's and designer homes to the patronizing attitudes and unchristian behavior among churchgoers. Few readers will be able to resist his narrative pull.

Anastas's astounding abilities, however, are sometimes given such free rein that they seem to gallop off under their own power. Structurally, the book is loosey-goosey, lacking a sense of purpose clear enough to control both the plot and Anastos's quixotic tendency to pursue new directions. The opening chapter seems to be a paean to his own talent more than a serious introduction to his characters and setting, the chapter consisting of three pages of text divided into just two spectacular, long sentences. The reader becomes more intrigued with whether the sentences will end than with their content. (See the Amazon excerpt.) Initially a broad satire directed at some easy and obvious targets, the book employs flat characters who serve as examples of suburban types, rather than as individuals.

The satire is not sustained throughout, however. Bethany Caruso, the main character, develops into a much more a sympathetic character than is consistent with satire, though she never becomes a fully round character, either. Even the mystery of the pastor's disappearance, which serves throughout as the unifying thread and provides a stage for the satire, ultimately turns out not to be the primary story at all. This is really the tale of Bethany, her marriage, and her life in suburbia, and much of the church satire and many of the characters associated with the pastor's disappearance turn out to be irrelevant to her central story.

This is a book of many delights which will gain Anastas a legion of new fans. Students of writing who enjoy observing how an author limits his subject and develops his themes through careful plot construction and use of detail may find themselves a bit nonplussed, however, by Anastas's insistent march to his own drummer. Mary Whipple