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Discovering the treasures of novelist Louis de Wohl
by Rose Trabbic
September 15, 2014 7:30 am 8 Comments
Several years ago, I bought a novel by Louis de Wohl as a birthday present for my husband. At the time, I was a little burned out on stories about the saints, so I gave no thought to reading it myself. Fast forward three years, and I am given the… Read more »
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This review originally appeared in Ignatius Novels author Roger B. Thomas’s personal blog, A Prince of the West (post here). Reprinted in full with permission. I’ve heard it said that if the world made sense, men would ride sidesaddle. I’m going to up that by claiming that if the world… Read more »
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Summer is almost over and these bloggers have some great end of summer reading suggestions! Sarah Reinhard at the Snoring Scholar suggests Do No Harm by Fiorella de Maria: “Enter Do No Harm, by Fiorella de Maria (Ignatius Press, 2013). It covers topics I am praying about and pretty sick-to-my-stomach about, topics… Read more »
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Roger Thomas is a lifelong Michigan resident, has been married to his wife Ellen since 1981. They have six grown children and eight grandchildren. He is a self-employed computer consultant. He loves reading, and his favorite authors include C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Rudyard Kipling, and P.G. Wodehouse. He has had… Read more »
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Our readers may have noticed a sudden lag in our blog posting… The reason is that we have been working tirelessly to bring you great new books this fall! We have some new novels coming out like The Accidental Marriage by Roger Thomas, Iota by T.M. Doran, and some great… Read more »
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More great reviews on Tobit’s Dog! “Have you ever reached the end of a book to find yourself feeling a little sad that it was finished; as if you were saying goodbye to good friends? That is how I felt as I closed Tobit’s Dog, by Michael Nicholas Richard….Tobit’s Dog is a novel… Read more »
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Conferring about the Catholic Literary Imagination
by Dan at Ignatius
July 30, 2014 12:53 pm Leave a Comment
I really need to do a round-up of all of the reams that have been poured out about the Catholic and otherwise Christian literary landscape since this site began and we pointed out a bunch of Catholic upstarts (not forgetting ourselves!). Without going into it all, though, see how much… Read more »
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Lately I’ve been reading nothing except Polish in Four Weeks by Marzena Kowalska, A Pocket Full of Rye by Dame Agatha Christie and, above all, Home Comforts: the Art & Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. And I’ve been doing little except housework because when I consulted the Great Cheryl… Read more »
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As some of you may already know, I absolutely love Dean Koontz’ Odd Thomas series, but I tend to stay away from his other novels because of the gore/horror element. However, I was intrigued as I read a few reviews on Amazon about his latest novel The City. Some were saying “It is unlike any other Koontz novel” or “If you’re looking for horror, you’ll be disappointed.” So, I decided to spend the $12 on the Kindle version and give it a try… and I was not disappointed. I kid you not when I say that this book is one of the best novels I have ever read!The story is told from the perspective of Jonah Kirk at age 54, reflecting on his life as a child in the 60’s. Little Jonah lives in a walk-up apartment in The City with his young mother, who sings at Jazz clubs and waitresses at Woolworth’s, and his no-good father, who is an aspiring chef at a local restaurant. When Jonah’s father decides to leave Jonah and his mother, Jonah believes that his life has changed for the better. Now, he can learn to play the piano like he always wanted and he doesn’t have to listen to his dad’s nagging wife stories.
But after meeting a lady named Pearl, who claims to be The City incarnate, Jonah’s life becomes a tangle of prophetic dreams and dangerous people. With the help of his friend and neighbor, Mr. Yoshioka, he will embark on an adventure involving crime and conspiracy that will change his life forever.
I found the book to be a combination of A Boy’s Life by Robert McGammon and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I enjoyed reading about the adventures of a little boy and his great wonder over all things simple and beautiful. Jonah’s character is wonderfully loveable with his appreciation of good music, his innocence, and his sense of humor. And Koontz’ Catholicism is ingeniously interwoven within Jonah’s family and within The City herself. But it is definitely not a tale for the faint of heart. The story does take place during the turbulent 1960’s, after all. There is great suffering that many characters must endure, and Jonah learns that you can either let suffering eat you from the inside out or you can let it mold you into a greater person:
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When we encounter the works of Dickens, Waugh, Eliot, and O’Connor; Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky; Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Picasso, we are amazed at the abundance of creativity, far surpassing that of “mere mortals”, art so sublime, so beautiful, so moving, that we can only marvel at it. So why… Read more »
