A Handbook of American Prayer

I'm only three-quarters of a way through this book but feel compelled to write up a review NOW. Shepard is truly sui generis and simply brilliant. Gorgeous, lusty prose with storytelling that combines elements of science fiction, magical realism, horror, you name it. The man writes like he's on a mission from ANOTHER WORLD. :) BTW, his short stories are incredible as well (he wrote the greatest dragon story and the greatest post-9/11 story IMO). I mentioned him as America's JG Ballard, because Ballard is the only other guy I know who can write such "out there" stuff with such breath-taking grace *and* audacity. This book's insights into celebrity-hood, religion and mass media mania are unnervingly spot-on and so much more affecting than something like Chuck Palahnuik's "Survivor" which has many of the same elements, but none of the soul and depth. It's the difference between night and day. Why Shepard hasn't gotten his due is beyond me. Meanwhile, writers that aren't even fit to walk in his shadow are getting oodles of money and fame. HUH? If you want to get a quick taste of just how "on-fire" his prose can get, pick up a copy at a bookstore or library and flip to page 114 and read that long gleaming riff of a sentence that starts with: "It had nothing to do with Sharon Stone..." haha! YES! While boring, over-baked "lit" books like Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union are getting lauded to the rafters, the real good stuff always seems to pass under the radar. Seek this one out!

I was first exposed to Lucius Shepard when I heard him give a reading of a chapter from HANDBOOK, then a novel in progress, back in 2003. I was immediately hooked by the chapter's beguiling mixture of the quotidian (an Arizona souvenir shop) and the eerie (a customer who might be a god) and looked forward to the book's publication with great anticipation. Now that I have read it, I can't say that I'm disappointed in the slightest. This is a literary noir thriller of the highest caliber. During the most recent half-decade of his writing career, Lucius has concentrated on novellas and other shorter forms, and his skill for compacting plot is used to great effect in this full-length novel. The book's first thirty pages include enough incident and conflict to fuel an entire novel, and he's just getting started. His characterizations are full-bodied and introduce you to people you'll feel you've known through a long, fulfilling relationship by the time you reach the book's final pages. Lucius's settings, from smalltown Arizona to the Mexican border to the Chilean coast, are vivid and linger in the mind. His prose is rich and serves a cultural satire that never comes across as tiresome or preachy. But best of all, these virtues, enough by themselves to propel another book to the top of many "Ten Best" lists, are harnessed to a plot that grabs you by the throat and never lets go. Here's a book that's not only good for you, but which tastes good, too. After slogging through many highly-praised novels in recent years which sorely (and often successfully) tempted me to put them aside, the fact that this book, a work of high literary quality and ambition, could be so damn entertaining was a very, very welcome gift from the reading gods.

Though I was reminded of both Nabokov's understated humor and Robert Bly's free verse in reading "Handbook of American Prayer," ultimately the book's a satisfying fantasy-genre read, comprising the pleasures of good noir, urban fantasy, and magic realism without neatly fitting any of those categories. "Handbook" doesn't really satirize the TV religion or Hollywood celebrities it involves. Given Shepard's propensity for full-scale attack on media icons, he's surprisingly restrained (though one popular film critic gets a good raking-over). The media trappings merely support the book's exploration of imprisonment -- how the narrator, lacking purpose in his life, falls into jail, goes through a hero's journey to find and exploit the magic that helps him survive it and prosper on the outside, and then extricates himself from that magic to win some psychological freedom. It's a lengthier treatment of the theme Shepard explored so well in the excellent novella "Jailwise" but arrives at a different, more optimistic conclusion, both figuratively and plotwise. Shepard employs a lot of his usual tropes -- altered states of consciousness, obsessive love, seedy locales -- but the narrator follows a different character arc than his usual protagonist, finding his way through an exercise of self-determination and loyalty that his characters usually can't manage, due to their natures or circumstances. "Handbook" is a smooth, coherent, satisfying read, consistently interesting and exciting.