Customer Reviews

Growing Up a Sullen Baptist and Other Lies

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Flynn is a wonderful storyteller. The book contains essays that are sometimes laugh out funny, and sometimes deeply thought provoking. To be able to write both, and to find both in a single volume, is a treat.

People who grew up in religious homes -- whether or not they are from Texas or the South -- will find the humorous stories remind them of their experiences in some way. My impression is that Flynn writes with a deep appreciation for aspects of his religious heritage while also acknowledging its sometimes narrowmindedness. One needs to have an appreciation for one's past in order to appreciate more deeply their present.

Flynn doesn't come across as having all the answers. I like that. I like books that invite me to ponder the questions the author is thinking about, and more of my own.

The first half of Robert Flynn's "Growing Up a Sullen Baptist" is down home, folksy and satirically humorous. Small town North Texas is portrayed with front-porch wisdom and warm nostalgia. But then we are (unwillingly, unwittingly) transported to the other side of the world--far, far away from little ol' Chilicothe. Our hero has metamorphosed away from a disciple of Mark Twain into a grizzled international journalist and his story no longer has much of anything to do with growing up a Baptist, sullen or otherwise. This second half of the book is self-indulgent and lacking balance in its bitter view of India and Viet Nam. (I've been to both, so have a basis for judging. I also grew up in North Texas.) Flynn writes well enough, but I felt baited by the first half of the book and switched by the second. Mixing the innocence of rural Chilicothe, Texas, with the tragedy of war-weary Viet Nam in a single slender volume without much connectivity makes reading this book a less than satisfactory experience.