9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gem of a debut!, November 2, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Hallelujah Side (Hardcover)
Living on "The Hallelujah Side"
Those of us who as children were dragged kicking and screaming against their will into church by their parents know that there are few joys in life better than sleeping in on a Sunday morning. As a result, who could blame us if we grew up harboring cynical attitudes and major resentments toward anything that smacked of God or organized religion. Hey, it's a lot easier to blame God (or your parents), than to look at how you might have contributed to your very own present miserable lot in life, right?
In fact, the church has been such a darling scapegoat and negative narrative engine driving so many novels that it is often easy to forget one seldom addressed and simple fact - there is real, bona fied, magic at the heart of religion.
And that is the triumph of "The Hallelujah Side," a wonderfully comic and sublime antidote for spiritual cynicism - a canny coming of age debut novel that recognizes the fear and intolerance fueling organized religion yet embraces rather than condemns the wonder, magic, and protective healing power of faith.
"It had been a Second Coming sky all day, which meant they might be in heaven by this evening." This remarkable first sentence kicks off a world of plush toy demons and blue-nosed angels - of midnight rooftop flights and wondrous water lilly maiden games. In other words, the divinely haunted world of precocious nine-year old Roxanne "Roxy" Fish.
The novel is set in the sputnik-fevered fifties in Ames, Iowa, where "it was so quiet you could hear the night crawlers traveling." Not unlike the Brewster clan in Arsenic and Old Lace, Roxy's immediate family, the Fishes, are lovingly drawn eccentric and likable oddballs. The difference is the Fishes don't want to kill people, they just want to convert them door-to-door. In fact, to the idealistic Fish way of thinking it is a glorious accident to be living in the Last Days. "Roxy marveled at her good luck in being born into a family that knew the truth. You could feel the Holy Ghost and the godly power of it, mad with possibilities."
The down side is Roxy not only has to endure the humiliation of growing up in her ultra-evangelical family but must also try to cope with the ever-present threat of eternal damnation hanging over her small red-headed soul. Needless to say, maintaining constant holy zeal can be very stressful. Luckily, like Moses and the burning bush, Roxy's best friend and spiritual advisor is a talking hedge.
Roxy's father, Winston, when not practicing baseball with Roxy, is a diligent minister in the First Assembly of God Church who regularly reads Newsweek and Life magazine to study the abhorrent things Americans are doing to find fodder for his sermons. Winston is a by-the-book Bible thumper who is none the less capable of amazing tolerance for his daughters' and others dissenting points of view. Roxanne's mother, Zelda Fish, who adores her family and constantly frets about them not making it to heaven with her, is always ready with a pithy come back like, "God isn't afraid of guns, God invented them." Roxanne's thorny sister, `Colleen the beautiful', pretends to be a Catholic, a genius, and adopted.
One of the best characters in the book is Roxy's uncle Roland, a Pentecostal healer who smells like newborn babies, prays in the closet and says hello by merely staring at people. Roland's God is a big God who impartially cures sinners, Dutch elm disease and insomniac dogs.
But this is Roxy's story and her duel dilemma is that she secretly loves singing rock-and-roll music and is not "saved." How can she ever reconcile her childish faith and her worldly desires? It is a heavy burden on a child's heart to try and belt out Little Richard with a `pork chop' voice and still have one ear cocked, waiting for the archangel Gabriel to blow his trumpet heralding the Rapture.
When the Fish family moves to California Roxy laments, "Pecan Street sported sinners' houses filled with lost souls who did not even bother to go to the wrong church. Some were atheists, she strongly suspected. In Glendale even the sky did not look Christian. The ragged clouds suggested not the Second Coming but Charles Darwin, Communism, dented Budweiser beer cans."
The tone may be reminiscent of Garrison Keillor and Ray Bradbury, but author Huffey isn't afraid to have her characters periodically collide head-on with real world sex and violence to both great comic and tragic effect.
The daughter of two Pentecostal preachers, Huffey illuminates the insular religious Pentecostal faith as only an insider could. That she is able to write about it so objectively and warmly only hints at demons she herself may have overcome and reconciled.
The book suggests that sometimes you must break away from both the status quo and family to find yourself. That redemption cannot be found in a Bible, an outhouse or a grade school music room. Redemption is not an outside but an inside job. Oh yeah, and sometimes very funny.
Huffey, like her avatar Roxanne, has obviously found her own fine "pork chop" voice. As I read each page I found myself smiling and felt my cynicism slipping away. I can hardly wait to read what she comes up with next.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
