Customer Reviews

Screen Door Jesus & Other Stories

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Christopher Cook may set his stories in a particular region of the country (East Texas, where he was born) but he's a lot more than a regional writer. For one thing, he lives in Europe. These stories really deal with universal human experiences, and they are powerful. They just happen to be expressed (sometimes tragically, sometimes hilariously) through the framework of the Southern fundamentalist culture. Just take a look at this review, which I picked up off the Dallas Morning News web site and agree with 100 percent:

The Dallas Morning News
Book Section
January 6, 2002

"Christopher Cook slyly examines religious factions and fractions"

By Bryan Woolley/ The Dallas Morning News

Early in the title story of Christopher Cook's new collection, the narrator - a 13-year-old Houston boy exiled to his grandparents' house in a small Southeast Texas town for the summer - describes his new cultural environment: "Mostly what they did was religion. A church on every block. Soon as one built up to a hundred members they'd fall into a fight, as if there was some critical mass beyond which people couldn't get along, and they'd form two new churches, like molecular division. Such disputes were said to be doctrinal. But Grandpa observed that if you peeled away that notion and looked underneath, what you'd find was a clash of personalities and American democracy in action."

All 10 stories in Mr. Cook's book are set in Bethlehem, a fictional burg in the steamy swamps and forests northeast of Houston. (In his magnificent thriller, "Robbers", published last year, a Texas Ranger pursues two serial killers through this same country.) In all the stories, the people of Bethlehem are "doing religion."

Some are practicing a sanctimonious, hypocritical, claustrophobic Main Street fundamentalist piety, a religious expression of narrow small-town minds and lives. Others are doing the Bible-thumping, weeping-and-moaning, hellfire-and-brimstone, washed-in-the-blood fundamentalism practiced in the little white frame Pentecostal and Baptist churches that are tucked amongst the trees along the two-lane highways of the Big Thicket and the Piney Woods. It's a simple and ruthless religion in which Satan is present and angels and demons fly among us. It's a religion in which the Antichrist and/or Jesus Christ may appear at any moment.

Neither religion allows for subtle shades of knowledge or interpretation or belief. Neither permits tolerance. Every word of the Bible is literal fact or it's a lie. A sinner is saved and headed for eternal heaven, or he's damned by his unbelief and bound for eternal torture.

Both faiths are replete with miracles and curses, punishments and dark emotion. Sometimes they're funny.

In "Screen Door Jesus," Mother Harper, while watering her gladiolas, beholds the image of Jesus in her screen door. This miracle, which she perceives at first as a blessing, turns into a curse. In "And I Beheld Another Beast," Veralynn Cunningham surreptitiously has her visiting grandchildren baptized at the Holiness Tabernacle, precipitating a crisis with their father and his new Catholic wife. In "Star Man," three oil-field hands who are driving to work on a cold Christmas Eve encounter a strange child and his mother in a roadside Waffle House. In "A Tinkling Cymbal" - a gripping fictional meditation on the Good Samaritan - a righteous and prudent banker refuses a loan requested by a down-and-out fellow church member, with dire consequences. In "Heresies," one of the funny stories, a couple of Pentecostal security guards eavesdrop on a gathering of liberal Protestant ministers at the John Shelby Boone Ecumenical Retreat Center.

Underlying all 10 of Mr. Cook's stories is a deep and fearless understanding of the Bible. As in Robbers, he's a master of setting, characterization, dialogue and narrative. The man knows what he's doing, and why.

Each savory story is a tasty vignette filled with the flavors of East Texas, piney woods, country folk. None so long as to make you feel
over-full. This collection is a thoroughly satisfying way to while away an afternoon.

christopher cook is a pretty good regional writer. he writes the local excellent, and the dialogue is pretty close, and the people, the people are vintage east texans. and i know, i live in southeast texas. there's nothing wrong with being a regional writer, it's just that i don't think those outside of this area are going to be interested. the stories are only ok. at times he seems to be celebrating religion and at times satirizing it. cook is trying to make a statement, you can tell by the way he closes his stories, but he just doesn't quite get there. i felt 'lawbreakers in bethlehem' was the best story in the collection, followed by 'screen door jesus' an excellent satire of east texas fundamentalism. 'arc of flesh, ascending' 'the serpent' and 'a tinkling cymbal' fall far short of quality storytelling. the shift to first person narrative in the final story is a bit abrupt, doesn't close the sequence the way it should. all in all, cook has a lot of potential as a texas writer. i'll keep watching what he produces to see where he goes from here.