Customer Reviews

Tales of the Sacred Heart

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Magic realism meets A Course in Miracles in this richly layered novel of neighborhood life in Chicago. Melanie Villines' interwoven threads of experience center on the roiling life of a parish in which the poor, Poles, Irish, Hispanics and the whole rich melting pot of American immigrant aspirations intertwine and separate in an unhomogenized frappe of textures and colors. The Sacred Heart of the title is the Catholic church and parish which forms the loose matrix in which the various communities bubble and ferment.

Through it all, the possibilities of miracles, of curanderos, faith healers, evangelists, and radio talk show hosts form a series of wonderful tableaux which contrast with and extend the ordinary disparate and desperate lives of the many protagonists in a way which at first defies comprehension and wholeness. A character in the book writes (wheels within wheels) a continuous counterpoint detailing the disintegration of the religious community in the face of modern quasi-secular alternatives to the One True Church, the Church Universal and Triumphant, that is Roman Catholicism.

But it all comes together in a denouement as strangely satisfying as it is impossibly mythical. A frightened, jealous man asks a curandero to curse an ugly man who is transformed into a figure of bright angelic beauty in fulfillment of the curse. A gang member wanting to get out of his gang has a vision of the Virgin, who happens to work at a local bank. The writer documenting the collapse of religious life talks with God and discovers a new meaning to his own. And an ordinary housewife and mother founds a new religion and talks with the Saints. It's a wild ride from start to finish but so persuasive in its suspension of disbelief that one says, "Yes, this is the way it must be, the way I desperately wish it to be."

The Sacred Heart is a heart on fire, and the author takes us into the heart of everything. Our deepest hopes and longings are revealed to be possible with the gift of grace, and grace is such an ordinary thing that one can find it on every street corner, in the local convenience mart, or in one's own heart. If the Church is in tatters, shredded into a thousand sects and cults, our own hearts rebuild it every day in strange and stranger ways, restoring it far closer to our own true heart's desire.

This book is a gem, a delight from start to finish. Humor is very visual for me and Melanie Villines paints vivid pictures with her words... I was right there with her in the mini-mart with brains splattered on the ho-ho rack. I felt like she had been inside my head before when I read the bit about Norma thinking God might be too exalted to visit a place where the floors hadn't been swept (I'm not past noticing cobwebs hanging from the ceiling lights at church). Actually, I had this feeling throughout much of the book... this author is a keen observer of people, she sees, she knows, she understands and best of all she enjoys. There are plenty of laughs, (yes, that lighter fluid in the face stuff was a real hoot), but also an underlying poignancy... poor exahausted Leszek, poor Tyler, poor all of us; it's a combination that made me a little wistful, but also securely comforted in the knowledge that life is good. This book will tickle your funny bone, tug at your heart and lift your spirit... it is thoroughly enjoyable.

Mellanie Villine's book is a pleasant tale; filled with vivid images that imbed one with a sense of ancient, often religious, meanings. A graceful act of storytelling in a contemporary Chicago setting.